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BRIEF INSTITUTES 



GENERAL HISTORY 



Being a Companion Volume to the Author's * Brief Insti- 
tutes OF OUR Constitutional History 
English and American' 



E.^ BENJAMIN ANDREWS D.D. LL.D. 

Professor of History in Brown University 



o '^ C. SEP 1-91887" 



BOSTON 

SILVER, ROGERS & COMPANY 
1887 



o 



Copyright, 1887 
By E. Benjamin Andrews 



THE UBRARFi 
;,Qy CONGRESS 

WASHINCJTOH, 



Typography by J. S. Cushikg & Co., Boston. 
Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston. 



r, .cA/ 



DEDICATED TO 

FRIEDRICH JODL Dr. Phil. 

Professor in the University of Breslau 

By his friend 

THE AUTHOR 



KpetTTOv yap ttov (TjXiKpov ev rj ttoXv fir] tKavois Trepavai, 

Plato, Theaetetus, c. 31. 



PREFACE 



In historical as in other instruction nothing can supply the place 
of the living teacher, but the teacher may have helps, and a prime 
one of these this book aspires to be. With such an aim it has been 
made synthetic in method, articulate, progressive, unitary. It forms 
a precipitate rather than an outline, being to history at large what 
the spinal cord is to the nervous system or the Gulf Stream to the 
Atlantic. All unimportant details it ignores, treats the most im- 
portant in notes, and studiously renders prominent the rationale of 
historical movement. The work does not offer matter for rote reci-. 
tation in the old fashion, but blazes through the jungle of the ages a 
course along which the instructor can guide his class much as he 
lists. It may serve as a mere volume for reference, as a companion 
and resume to independent lectures, or as the basis of comments 
from topic to topic. A special feature of the plan it embodies is the 
encouragement and facilitation of collateral reading. At the head 
of every Chapter and of nearly every paragraph are named, among 
many, a number of Histories which can be consulted in any well 
appointed library, the paragraph-headings commonly aiding readiest 
reference by citing chapter, section or page. Students so unfortu- 
nate as to be cut off from side-lights of this character will find valu- 
able illumination upon each Chapter in the corresponding portion of 
Fishers Outlines. | While the eleven Chapters constitute a compact, 
orderly and rounded whole, less advanced pupils may omit the First, 
those well versed in classical times the Third. General, though not 
the finest, unity will be preserved if a beginning be made with the 
Fourth. Of the later the Seventh can be passed with the least loss. 
Far better than sheer omission is the discussion of an entire Chapter 
in one or two exercises, pupils, with this in view, preparing each an 
abstract of its salient points. As the course can be abridged, so it 



VI PREFACE 

can be -indefinitely elongated and enriched by devoting hours to 
essays, abstracts or special studies upon peculiarly weighty by-topics. 
In connection with many of these ample literature is for this very 
purpose listed in notes. 4 Although primarily designed for the class- 
room, the Institutes will, it is hoped, be found also the best sort of 
a manual for general readers in history. They are preeminently 
adapted to aid university students engaged in special historical in- 
vestigation yet wishing fuller grasp upon the main course of human 
events, v The bibliographies are believed to contain most of the 
available gold. Some less precious metal is indeed added, but, we 
trust, exceedingly little pinchbeck. Should it at first strike any 
reader that we have rendered Louis XIV and Frederic the Great 
insufficiently conspicuous, let him reflect that those monarchs were 
after all not prominent epoch-makers in the actual causal order of 
history, v' English events, except where vitally affecting continental, 
have been purposely disregarded, because English history logically 
ought to be, as in America it usually is, taught by itself. In con- 
sulting Histories in the preparation of these pages the author has 
sought those acknowledged to be of the highest ability and trust- 
worthiness. He of course does not pretend to have composed from 
the sources in the strict sense of that phrase, but he has, so to speak, 
steadied himself upon these all the way, and has taken special re- 
course to them in most cases of dissidence in the views of recog- 
nized secondary authorities. That he has nowhere interpreted ill, 
nowhere distorted the true perspective, he dares not hope, but prays 
critics to remember the bulk of the material which he has had to 
canvass, and the extraordinary difficulties attending such 7naxiinum 
in 7mnimo presentation. He will be grateful for all criticisms, and 
particularly solicits notification of any out-and-out errors which may 
be met with. 

WiLBRAHAM, MaSS., 

August 4, 1887. 



CONTENTS 



PAGES 

Preface v 

Table of Contents vii 

Bibliography to Chapter I xii 

CHAPTER I 

HISTORY AND THE STUDY OF HISTORY. The Word History- 
History Objective — History Subjective — Civilization— Historical 
Method— Method for the Data — For Investigation — For Histori- 
cal Exposition — Is History a Science ? — Objections — Another 
Objection — The Chief Objection — Thoughts toward a Different 
View — History a Science — Closer Conception — Positivist Notion 
of History — Is there a Philosophy of History ? — Agnosticism — 
Our Conclusion — Bearings of this Conception of History — Value 
of Historical Study — Mode of Work — The Partition of History . 1-23 

Bibliography to Chapter II 24 

CHAPTER II 

THE OLD EAST. Juventus Mundi -The Oldest History - Its Bear- 
ers — Eastward the Course of Empire — Diversity and Unity — 
Egypt — The Old Kingdom — The New Kingdom — Assyria and 
Babylon — India — Government — Intelligence — Writing — Art — 
Industrial Condition — Religion — The Mosaic Faith — Morality — 
Contribution to the West . 25-60 

Bibliography to Chapter III 62 

CHAPTER III 

THE CLASSICAL PERIOD. Character of Classical Culture - Greece : 
Exaltation of Mind — Organized Intelligence — Philosophy — Art — 
Political Ideas — Propagation of these Elements — Rome : Genius 



Vlll CONTENTS 

PAGES 

and Place in History — Political Universality and Absolutism — 
The Latin Language — Roman Law — Stoicism — The Municipium 

— The Imperial Organization — Rise of Christianity — Its Influence 

— Early Church Organization — Rise of the Papacy —Theological 
Controversy — Other Influence of the Church . . . 63-96 

Bibliography to Chapter IV 98 

CHAPTER IV 

THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME. Signification and Significance - 
Moral Decadence— The Influence of the Church — Death of the 
Military Spirit — Poverty — Occult Influences— Lack of Unity — 
The Primitive Germans — Their Culture— Their Constitution — 
Their Military System — Their Religion — The Mixture — Disparity 
and Conflict — Constitutional Results — The Culmination — The 
Beginnings of France — Rise of the Carolingian House — Breach 
of "West with East — Papal Alliance with the Franks . . 99-133 

Bibliography to Chapter V 134 

CHAPTER V 

THE MEDI>€VAL ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE WEST. The Ecclesi- 
astical Unity of Europe — Carolus Imperator — His Government — 
His Relations with the Church — His Aid to Culture and Letters 

— The Empire after Karl — Otho the Great — The Empire and the 
German Kingdom — The Extent of the Empire — The Dukes — 
The Counts — Empire and Church — Gregory Hildebrand — The 
Church and Feudalism— To Canossa — The Concordat of Worms, 
1 1 22 — Guelph and Ghibelline — Frederic I — Frederic II — Fall 

of the Hohenstaufen .....,,. 135-173 

Bibliography to Chapter VI 174 

CHAPTER VI 

FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY. Feudalism defined 

— Its Modifications — Its Causes — Common Theory of Origin — 
Roth's View — Waitz's — Tenures of Land — Society — Feudalism 
Victorious — Capetian Reaction — Feudalism how far a System — 



CONTENTS IX 

PAGES 

Defects and Merits — German Feudalism — Italian — English — 
Communes and the Third Estate — Suger and Philip Augustus — 
Saint Louis — Philip the Fair — Monarchy Supreme . . 175-214 

Bibliography to Chapter VII 216 

CHAPTER VII 

ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES. Arabia before Mohammed -Mo- 
hammed — His Doctrine — Mohammedan Conquest — The Causes 
— Spain and France — The East — The Civilization of Islam — Its 
Decline — Jerusalem — The Crusades : Occasion and Meaning — 
The First Crusade — The Second and Third — The Fourth — The 
Remaining Eastern Crusades — The Crusades in the West — Re- 
sults of the Crusades : Intellectual and Social — Ecclesiastical — 
Political — The Same 217-255 

Bibliography to Chapter VIII 256 

CHAPTER VIII 

RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION. Genius of the Renaissance - 
Its Antecedents — Its Dawn — Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio — Flor- 
ence — Dark Side of the Renaissance — Renaissance Literature — 
Art — Architecture and Sculpture — Painting — The Renaissance 
European — The Renaissance beyond Italy — The New Ideas — 
Condition of the Church — Reformers before the Reformation — 
Germany : Religious State — Political State — Spread of the Ref- 
ormation — Political Intervention and Settlement — Ecclesiastical 
Settlement 257-300 

Bibliography to Chapter IX 302 

CHAPTER IX 

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. General Cause and Character - The 
Augsburg Settlement — The Difficulty Aggravated — 111 Success of 
Protestantism — Special Motives for Intervention — Union and 
League — Contest for Jiilich-Cleve — Bohemia's Royal Charter — 
War Begun: Periods — Attitude of Europe — Bohemian Phase — 
Palatinate Phase — Danish Phase: Waldstein — Waldstein's Pol- 



X CONTENTS 

PAGES 

icy — Gustavus Adolphus — The Swedish Phases — The Peace of 
Westphalia — Germany after the Peace — PoHtical Outcome for 
France — Religious Outcome 303-344 

Bibliography to Chapter X 346 

CHAPTER X 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. The Newest Political History - 
Importance of the French Revolution — Monarchy — Nobility — 
Clergy — The Third Estate — Economics — Thought — Approach 
of Crisis — States-General and Constituent Assembly — Revolution 
Begun — The Constitution— Political Grouping — Political Forces 
and Currents — March of the Republic — King and Emigrants — 
Europe and the Republic — The Rise of Napoleon — His Down- 
fall-Results ... 347-393 

Bibliography to Chapter XI 394 

CHAPTER XI 

PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE. Prussia in German History- 
Old Brandenburg — Its Rise to Statehood — The Great Elector — 
The First Two Kings — Frederic the Great — Napoleon's Heel — 
Resurrection — The Continental Gerrymander of 181 5 — Metter- 
nichismus — 1830 — The Mirage of '48 — Sequel — Prussia's last 
Genuflection — A Spinal Column — Crash of the Old Bund — Birth 
of a New — From Bund to Empire — De Bello Gallico — New Ger- 
many and New Europe 395-440 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER I 

Lotze, Mikrokosmus** B. VII [trans., Scribner and Welford]. Flint, 
Philos. of H. in France and Germany.* Shedd, Lect. on the Philos. of H. 
Freeman, Hist'l Essays, I Ser., i; Methods of Hist'l Study.** Stubbs, 
Mediaeval and Modern H.,** i-v. Froude, Short Studies, I Ser,, i, II Ser., 
at end. Buckle, H. of Civilization in Eng.* Bisset, Essays on Hist'l 
Truth.* Bunsen, God in H. Smith [Goldwin], On the Study of H. 
Atkinson, H. and the Study of H. Ranke, Universal H.,* I. Kings- 
ley [in Roman and Teuton], Limits of Exact Science as app. to H. 
Adam, Theories of H.** Morison, 'History' [in Encyc. Brit.]. Lewis 
[Sir G. C.], Credibility of Early Roman H. Hegel, Phil, of H.* [Bohn]. 
Schlegel, do. [also in Bohn]. Augustine, City of God. Spencer, Study 
of Sociology. Draper, H. of the Intell. Develop't of Europe. Arnold, 
Introd. Lect. on Mod. H. Thornton [in Old-fashioned Ethics, etc.]. His- 
tory's Scientific Pretensions. Comte, Pos. Philos., B. VI. Mill, Logic,* 
B. VI. Voltaire, ' Histoirey in Diet, philos., CEuvres, vol. 41. Droysen, 
Grundriss der Historik** [last ed., 1882]. Rhomberg, Erhebung d. 
Gesch. zum Range einer Wissenschafi* [1883]. RochoU, Philosophie 
d. Gesch.* [1878]. Lorenz, Geschichtswissetischaft** u.s.w. [Berlin, 
1886]. Maurenbrecher, Ueber die Aufgabe d. historischen Forschung. 
Gervinus, Grtuidzilge d. Historik. Floto, Ueber historische Kritik. 
Riimelin, Reden ti. Atifsatze* I Ser., R. i; II Ser., R. v. Herder, Ideen 
zur Philosophie d. Gesch. d. Menschheit. v. Humboldt [W.], Die Atif- 
gabe des Geschichtschreibers* \_Abhandlungen d. Berl. Akademie, l820-'i]. 
Bernheim, Methodik der Geschichts forschung [1880]. Ranke, zur Krit. 
neuerer Geschichtschreiber* [1824, Werke, Bd. 34]. Michelet, System 
der Phil, als exacter Wissenschafi, Theil iv. Bossuet, Discours sur Vhist. 
universelle. Montesquieu, Esprit des lois. Prevost-Paradol, Essai 
sur Vhist. universelle [1875]. Sismondi, Hist, de la chute de V empire 
romain [ch. i is on the nature of h.]. Odysse-Barot, Philos. de Vhist. 
Laurent, Etudes sur Vhist. de Vhumanite** [18 vols., results seen in 
last]. Vico, Principi di una scienza nuova [vol. iv of Ferrari's ed. of 
Wks. Milano, 1836. On Vico's views, Flint's 'Vico,' in Philosophical 
Classics Series, Edinb., 1884]. 

* denotes special, ** preeminent serviceableness. So in all the following bibliographies. 



CHAPTER I 

HISTORY AND THE STUDY OF HISTORY 



§ I The Word History 

Rocholl, Eitileitung. 

The term history has both an objective and a sub- 
jective signification, — events in themselves, and man's 
apprehension of events. The distinction is important.^ 
This apphcation of 'objective' and 'subjective' must 
not be confused with the other, of correctness and arbi- 
trariness in alleged historical results. 

1 Yet except Rocholl no writer to our knowledge mentions it. It is 
history in its objective sense which Lotze discusses in Mikrokos??ius, VII, 
while history subjective is Bacon's theme in de augmeiitis. Droysen, His- 
torik, uses the term in both senses, as indeed is very common, the best 
writers passing from one to the other apparently without noticing the 
change. 

§ 2 History Objective 

Arnold, Inaugural Lect. Lotze, Mikrokosmus, VII. 

History spans but a brief portion of the past. To 
brute existence succeeds human, at first little reflective, 
determined mostly from without. Thought, inventive- 
ness, migration, bring diversity, which becomes, like 
self-consciousness, a main trait of our species. It re- 
lates to both place and time. Races and peoples result. 



2 HISTORY 

Civilization has its centres ; these shift unceasingly, 
now eastward, now westward ; and crises occur at which 
the advance of thousands of years is lost. Ruling ideas 
change, the form of culture being successively Egyptian, 
Asiatic, Greek, Roman, Teutonic. Cities, empires, rise, 
fall. Conquerors sweep through the earth, subdue all, 
then lose all, and are perhaps themselves forgotten. 
Meantime no chaos : causality is pervasive, and ages 
together show progress, however general and slow. 
Such is history m se} 

1 Of course even history objective is history conceived, hence not out 
of relation to our apprehension. So in any field we can think of the data 
of a science before, or separate from, the existence of the science. 

§ 3 History Subjective 

Arnold, as at § 2. Weber, Weltgeschichte, I, 12. Rawlinson, Manual. Flinty 
Philosophy of Hist., 583 sqq. 

An a posteriori and tentative definition of history sub- 
jective would make it the orderly knowledge of things 
in time, as Physics, in the large sense, is the knowledge 
of things in space. A closer definition, still revealing 
no inner law, results from the further restriction of his- 
tory to (i) man, (2) his earthly career, (3) ages and local- 
ities marked by some degree of self-consciousness on 
his part,^ (4) his life in society,^ (5) comparatively main 
events in the thus determined compass, (6) these events 
in their genetic and causal relations. 

1 Subjective history manifestly cannot antedate objective. This, Schlei- 
cher begins with speech. Hegel denies history in the true sense to India 
and China and makes it commence with Persia, the first empire that passed 
away. Curtius agrees with Hegel as to Egypt. Sismondi says : ' History 
cixly arises with civilization. So long as man struggles with physical needs 



STUDY OF HISTORY 3 

he concentrates all his attention upon the present. He has no past, no 
memories, no history.' 

^ Mommsen : * The doings and dealings, the thoughts and imaginings, 
of the individual, however strongly they may reflect the characteristics of 
the national mind, form no part of history.' Cf. Arnold, Inaugural Lec- 
ture, where he points out that history arises only when a considerable 
group of men unite in a common interest. La psychologie li'envisage 
que Vindividu, et elk Venvisage d^une manUre abstraite, absolue, conime 
un sujet permanent et toujours identique h lui-meme ; aux yeux de la 
critique, la conscience se fait dans Vhumanite comme dans Vindividu ; elle 
a son histoire. Le grand progres de la critique a ete de substituer la cate- 
gorie du devenir h la categorie de Vetre, la conception du relatif a la con- 
ception de Vabsoluy le mouvement h V iinmobilite. Renan, Averroes et 
Vaverroisme. 

§ 4 Civilization 

Goldwin Smith, Study of Hist. Flint, Introduction. Leaky, Hist, of European 
Morals, I. Fiske, Destiny of Man, chaps, xi, xii, xiii. Guizot, Civilization in 
Europe, Lect. I. 

A conception auxiliary to that of history, derived from 
certain of the above elements, is civilization.^ A nation 
is regarded civilized in proportion as therein, at once and 
harmoniously, (i) morality is widespread and rational, 
(2) the same is true of rehgion, (3) intelligence prevails, 
both intensive and extensive, (4) social organization is 
complete, (5) the means of wealth are abundant and well 
distributed, (6) government asserts itself to the point of 
highest helpfulness to general, without hindering indi- 
vidual, development, (7) art is cultivated, refinement and 
taste general, (8) in all these respects society occupies 
an attitude of progress.^ 

1 Honegger, Kulturgeschichte, I, § i, complains with cause of the 
little which has been accomplished toward a definition of civilization 
{Kicliur'). Guizot reduces it to progressive melioration in the condition 
of both society and the individual. W. von Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi- 
sprache, etc., I, distinguishes civilization as relatively external, from Kultur 



4 HISTORY 

and Bildung, more internal, almost as if that could be perfect without these. 
Seebohm, Reformation, 5, makes it a political conception : ' the art of i 
living together in civil society.' Cf. § 15, n. I. 

2 On the idea of progress, and the various forms it has assumed in con- 
temporary science, Caro, in Revue des deux Alondes, 15 Oct., 1873. Cf. 
§ I7>n. 3- 

§ 5 Historical Method 

Froude, Short Studies, II ser., at end. Freeman, Methods. Droysen, Historik. 
Rhoniberg, Erhebung. 

Logically first among the many important problems 
which inhere in the conceptions presented by the above 
paragraphs, is the question how and how far subjective 
history can be brought into agreement with objective, 
in other words, how far the knowable of man's past can 
become known. To answer this question is the task of 
historical method, a science by itself.^ Historical, like 
all work, to be most successful, must proceed in an 
orderly way. The mind applies its categories to any 
matter of knowledge only gradually. History in the 
most objective sense is not at once data for a science 
of history, supposing such a science possible ; and the 
data for such a science would fall far short of being the 
completed science. The science of historical method 
discusses method for the data and the investigation of 
history, and for the presentation of historical results.^ 

1 Even those who deny that there can be a science of history admit the 
existence of a science of historical investigation. Notice, esp., Froude, as 
above. 

2 Note the logical order of our matter. Having defined as it were 
from the outside both history and civilization, we pass to examine the 
science of method, that science by which alone historical truth can be 
ascertained. Upon learning what this is able to accomplish, we are in 
condition to test the questions concerning history itself as basis for science 
and philosophy. 



study of history 5 

§ 6 Method for the Data 

Droysen, Hzstorik, §§ 45 sqq. 

The aim of this is so to lay out the fields, classes, etc., 
of data to be examined, and to present such modes of 
treating them, as shall insure their most facile and per- 
fect investigation. Method here can, of course, be more 
or less exhaustive. Thorough method would subject the 
data to both static and dynamic analysis. By the static, 
the categories of space and time would first be applied. 
Then, within any given compass thus defined, the com- 
plex of historical material could be so dissected as to 
exhibit men's acts and, to some extent, their aims and 
impulses, also such social institutions as church, state,] 
property, money, and the like, as relatively isolated phe-! 
nomena. By the dynamic, causal connections would 
be brought to view, the movement of history descried, 
events traced to their proximate, and as far as possible, 
to their ultimate, causes, and the entire life of man on 
earth reduced to a certain unity.^ 

1 The purpose of this paragraph is to suggest the sort of plan which the 
successful historical investigator must have in mind before he begins his 
ivork. Droysen has nearly the same purpose in speaking of: i materials, 
a) pieces of nature stamped with man's impress, as inventions, also brutes 
domesticated and trained, ^) man's own development into nations and 
races, c) social formations, d) political do. ; ii forms, a) natural partner- 
ships, as family, neighborhood, tribe, b) ideal do., as speech, the arts, 
sciences, religions, c) practical do., as government, justice, property; 
iii agents, which are human beings, i.e., subjects of will; iv ends, teleo- 
logical view of history : all ends converging to one, and this undiscover- 
able by investigation. 



6 HISTORY 

§ 7 For Investigation 

Freeman, Methods. Droysen, §§ 19 sqq. Lenormant, praef. to Histoire ancienne 
de V Orient. Stubbs, Mediaeval and Mod. Hist., i-v inc. 

Historical investigation embraces three processes : 
I Discovery^ which, through questioning, comparison, 
combination and hypothesis, brings to Hght sources,^ 
viz. : {a) remains, ip) sources in the narrower sense, 
if) monuments. 2 Criticism^ whose problem is to de- 
termine the real relation borne by these pieces of the 
past to the original life-scene, inquires into their {a) gen- 
uineness, ip) changes of form, {c) probativeness in rela- 
tion to their profession,^ {d) probativeness in relation to 
the investigator's need. 3 Liierpretation, whose task 
is truthfully and as completely as possible to re-create 
from those now understood pieces of the past the origi- 
nal life-scene, handles {a) the mere facts attested by the 
evidence, {b) their conditions, {c) the psychological pro- 
cesses which were their immediate causes and their im- 
mediate results, {d) the great thoughts dominating these 
processes. 

1 Remains or remnants are real pieces of the past which were never 
intended as records [in memoriam reruni\. They may be tilings bearing 
human stamp, as papers, books, roads, aqueducts, mounds, or nistoms or 
thoughts that have been handed down. A language is a remnant. Sources, 
in the specific sense, consist of histories, chronicles, traditions, and what- 
ever was originally intended in nienioriam rerum. These sources may be 
contemporary or secondary. Monuments combine both the above charac- 
ters, being remnants which at the same time were intended to conserve 
memories of persons, things or events. Such are literal monuments, like 
the pyramids, most works of art, coins, medals, landmarks, coats of arms, 
names, titles. — Droysen. On use of inscriptions as sources, Hicks, Manual 
of Greek Hist'l Inscriptions [Clarendon Pr., 1882]. On making history from 
language, Max MUller, Science of Lang., 235; Chips, II, 251; Contemp. 



STUDY OF HISTORY 7 

Rev., Oct., 1882. Also Mommsen, Rome, I, 37 sqq. The early Indo- 
Europeans had all our domestic animals except the cat, but we cannot 
prove them agricultural as we can the Greco- Romans. They had the 
family, also gold and nearly all our other metals. Rawlinson gives instead 
of the above tripartite division of sources a bipartite, into ' records ' and 
' antiquities.' Freeman and Stubbs justly emphasize the absolute indis- 
pensableness to truthful historical writing of acquaintance with the sources. 
Bisset, Essay i, shows that criticism is, if possible, even more indispen- 
sable. An historian, like Froude or Hume, may work from the original 
sources, yet construct fables. Many documents carefully preserved as 
authorities contemporary with the events they profess to describe are 
known to have been composed to conceal instead of revealing the truth. 

2 Such questions as, What were the author's opportunities for knowing? 
What his bias? ^Vhat the bias of his times? Was the thing possible in- 
trinsically? possible under the circumstances? As to myths, it will not do 
to trim off that which is incredible and accept the rest. The incredible 
may be the most or the only valuable part. 



§ 8 For Historical Exposition 

Rhomberg, VI. Droysen, §§ 87 sqq. 

Historical exposition must regard first of all, tnitk 
and perspective, the latter in the two elements of times'^ 
and proportion. Further : i In respect to its general 
form, historical exposition may be either analytic or syn- 
thetic, and analytic exposition may either {a) follow the 
course of the original investigation, {b) ask a question 
and test various answers, progressively approaching the 
true, or {c) state a fact and trace its several implications. 
2 Its subject-matter may be very various ; as a life, the 
operation of some historical cause or congeries of them, 
the career of an institution, one or more, a conflict of 
elements, the social culture ^ of a people or period. 3 
Its main aim may be to interest, to instruct or to dem- 
onstrate.^ 4 Its style may be more simply didactic or 



8 HISTORY 

more rhetorical. Fine style in historical writing is not, 
as is often assumed, incompatible with fidelity to fact. 
5 According to the degree and mode in which he deals 
with causes [dynamics], the writer will be a chronicler, 
a pragmatist or a philosophic historian.* 

1 I.e., contemporary events must be so exhibited, and non-contemporary 
so — an important and difficult thing. 

2 Kulturgeschichte need not be unscientific, though too much of it has 
been, treating of matters destitute of bearing on the progress of civilization. 
Hence its too great unpopularity vi'ith scientific historians. Jodl, Kultur- 
geschichtschreibutig, Halle, 1878. 

^ Historia scribitur ad narranduni non ad probandum, says Quintil- 
ian. This was true of Livy and most ancient historians. Moderns care 
more for objective fact and for social evolution. Morison, ' History,' in 
Encyc. Brit., speaks of a ' rhetorical ' [ancient] and a ' sociological ' 
[modern] school of historical composition. He allies Macaulay with the 
rhetorical. But Thucydides and Tacitus are patterns of critical historical 
writing. 

4 Gervinus, Grundzuge der Historik. On pragmatism and philosophy 
in history, Seeley and Birrell, Contemp. Rev., June, 1885. S. conceives 
history as a philosophy; B., as a pageant. Cf. Flint, Phil, of Hist, in 
France and Germany, 222. True history is no mere account of 'bare 
fact ' to the exclusion of construction. The meaning, the bearing, of facts 
is the main thing. Also not every fact of the past is of import for history, 
e.g., that Karl Great, according to Einhard, had bright eyes. Had Einhard 
written * blue eyes,' as Luden, ' for patriotism's sake,' makes him read, it 
would have been the registry of a significant historical fact. 

§ 9 Is History a Science.? 

Kingsley [in Roman and Teuton], Limits of Exact Science as App. to Hist. Froude, 
Short Studies, I, i. Goldwin Smith, Study of Hist. Mill, Logic, B. VI. Rjimelin, 
Reden und Aufs'dtze, II, 118 sqq. Thornton, Old-fashioned Ethics, ii. 

While no one questions that history admits the appli- 
cation of scientific methods, and yields solid and orderly 
knowledge, including numberless instructive and useful 
generalizations, thus forming one of the most important 



STUDY OF HISTORY 9 

fields for human study, its character as science in any 
proper sense, has been earnestly denied. Objectors 
evidently do not merely mean either (i) that history is 
necessarily an inexact science,^ or (2) that it is, as yet, 
imperfectly developed.^ They intend to assert that a 
proper science of history is impossible in the nature of 
the case. The impossibility is variously grounded. 

1 Like ethics, e.g. 

2 Like the science of the tides or of medicine. On tides, Sir Wm. 
Thompson before the British Association, Aug. 24, 1882. 

§ 10 Objections 

See last §. Westmin. Rev., Jan., 1881. 

The alleged impossibility has been based upon defect 
or difficulty in man's means of knoivledge. Writers have 
urged : i That we know past and even contemporary 
events only very uncertainly and inadequately. 2 That 
history being an infinite progress yet not moving in 
cycles, must need infinite time clearly to reveal its law.^ 
There is much weight to both assertions. Especially 
touching the first, there are many great historical events 
as to which the impossibility of arriving at the exact 
truth is proverbial. 2 But difficulties nearly the same in 
kind with these pertain to every science.^ 

1 Rocholl : ' History shows us neither beginning nor end ' (386) . Ru- 
melin : ' the laws of human development will be locked up to scientific 
knowledge still for unmeasured stretches.' — Reden u. Aufs'dtze, I, 29. 
Floto was more or less of a pessimist. Ficker is a virtuoso in Diplomatik, 
so is Sickel; but they differ toto ccelo as to the value of certain sources. 
So Gaedeke and Bresslau upon the Casket Letters of Mary Stuart. 

2 We know naught of Hannibal but through his deadly foes. Nor of 
David Leslie, who fought the battle of Dunbar against Cromwell. Bisset 



10 HISTORY 

ably exhibits this difficulty. See, esp., Essay i. Of Mirabeau'S speech to 
the messenger of Louis XVIj refusing to dissolve the Constituent Assem- 
bly, there are three different versions, variant and in part contradictory, 
all from ear-witnesses, — Ducoudray, Hist. Conteifiporaine, 94. At what 
moment, or hour, did Bliicher arrive at Waterloo? Die Zeiten der Ver- 
gangenheit, says Goethe, sind tins ein Buch init sieben Siegeln. With 
G. this was no poetic fancy but a fixed conviction. Of past times and 
peoples we have no statistics. But general knowledge is yet knowledge, 
within its limits as valuable as any. 

^ We certainly get in history no such cycles or totalities of fact or 
development as we do in botany, e.g., where we can mark the birth and 
death of plants. Also, in history, the field of objective data is ever grow- 
ing, as well as the perfection of our mental grasp upon the data. But in 
neither of these particulars is history worse off than astronomy. Least of 
all can a positivist urge objection (2), as to him all sciences are in flux. 
In a sense he is right. In every one data are multiplying, or at least our 
knowledge of data is increasing. The history of the sciences bids us 
expect that after a hundred years few of them will wear the same face as 
now. They are sciences notwithstanding. There would be a science of 
botany if each plant lived a million years. 

§ II Another Objection 

Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille, etc., I, § 51, II, Kap. 38. Rumelm, as at § 9. 

3 Schopenhauer and RiimeUn deny scientific charac- 
ter to history because of what they assume to be the 
permanent and necessary relationship of its object-7natter 
to our intelligence. They judge that in consequence of 
this relationship all historical generalizations, instead of 
being, like those of veritable science, legislative for 
instances and cases, are, at least so far as we can ever 
know, more or less, if not entirely, subjective, related to 
the actual facts much as are mathematically calculated 
probabilities.^ But * any facts are fitted in themselves 
to be a subject of science, which follow one another 
according to constant laws, although those laws may not 



STUDY OF HISTORY II 

have been discovered nor even be discoverable by our 
existing resources.'^ These authors therefore only 
prove history an incomplete or at worst an inexact 
science. 

1 What Schopenhauer says amounts only to the truism that sense- 
phenomena, as such, are not matter for thought. But — what Flint in 
his criticism overlooks — the great pessimist largely corrects himself be- 
fore ending his discussion, by admitting the possibility of a ihought-gx2,s^ 
upon historic fact which shall be truly objective. Schopenhauer, like Goethe, 
places history in analogy with travels, anecdotes, etc., — interesting and not 
destitute of value, but nothing more. RUmelin conceives it rather as Knies 
and Roscher regard political economy. Both seem to harbor the vicious 
notion that there is no science but exact science. 

2 Mill, Logic, B. VI, iii. An imperfect Science is one susceptible of 
becoming exact, but not yet completely wrought out; an inexact, one to 
the full construction of which our present powers are inadequate. 

§ 12 The Chief Objection 

Froude, Short Studies, I, i. Adams, Manual, Int. Schlegel, Philos. of Hist., 390 sqq. 

4 The most serious objection of all, urged by Froude 
with many others, relates to the object-matter of his- 
tory. It is that, man's will being free, human actions 
always involve an incalculable element.^ But [a) this 
would, at most, only prove imperfection in the science,^ 
and {b) cannot effect even so much save through the 
inadmissible conception of freedom as arbitrariness.^ 

1 * If it is free to man to choose what he will do or not do, there is no 
adequate science of him. If there is a science of him, there is no free 
choice ' [Froude] . Yet Froude, most illogically, shifts the ground of his 
objection when he adds : * If we had the whole case before us, . . . some 
. such theory as Mr. Buckle's might possibly turn out to be true.' 

2 Because unnumbered events which go to make up history are con- 
fessedly under law, Lotze in VII, i, of Miki'okosjmis, has laid stress on 
this. Ibid., ii, * The irregular will of the individual is always restricted in its 
action by universal conditions not subject to arbitrary will.' 



12 HISTORY 

3 Freedom and action under law are not contradictory conceptions as 
Froude and Thornton allege. Nothing could be more thoroughly the sub- 
ject of scientific knowledge than the behavior of a perfectly rational being. 
It is because men are but partially rational and free that our limited intelli- 
gence has difficulty in forecasting their deeds. Even Lotze's masterly dis- 
cussion seems infected with the confusion of free with arbitrary will. So 
Lenormant and Rumelin. Rlimelin keenly notices how vain it is to regard 
the great masses of historic fact as wholly under law unless each human 
volition is so. 



§ 13 Thoughts toward a Different View 

Mill as at § 9. 

I The term ' science ' is very inclusive.^ 2 A body 
of facts may constitute a science in spite of large lacimcB 
among them and exceeding perplexities concerning them. 
3 The admitted applicability of scientific methods to 
history argues a scientific character in history. 4 The 
application of such methods in modern historical study 
has produced immense and invaluable results. 5 Sev- 
eral commonly acknowledged sciences are in a sense 
embraced in history.^ 

1 Much dissidence of view would instantly disappear were disputants to 
begin by seeking a common definition of this term. 

2 Political economy, ethnology, politics. Scientific philology is also 
very dependent on history. So is scientific law. 

§ 14 History a Science 

Mill as at § 9. Connie, Positive Philosophy, VI. Draper, i. Rhomberg as at § 5. 

Knowledge becomes science in proportion to its com- 
pleteness.^ Since, data being gathered, order or organi- 
zation is the source of this completeness, knowledge is 
science in the degree in which it can be subjected to 



STUDY OF HISTORY 1 3 

method and law, and so rendered comprehensible and 
certain. Under this test history must surely be as- 
signed the rank of a science, though confessedly inexact 
and as yet but partially wrought out. As illustrating 
the order traceable in the historical field, take : i The 
laws of progress in general, and of progress by rhyth- 
mic contrast and opposition.^ 2 The scope of predic- 
tion in history, often wrongly exalted to the place of 
sole criterion.^ 3 The possibility of referring historical 
movement to certain springs, as (a) ideas of right,* 
{b) personal initiative, {c) the spirit of an age or period, 
{d) the spirit of a people.^ 

1 Wissenschaft is that which schafft Wissen ; i.e., Wissen is its result. 
Wissen is, to be sure, also its cause. 

2 Such rhythm Hegel takes as the law of history, and the facts support 
him in a marvellous manner. It is, however, only a formal law, like the 
general law of progress. It reveals no causes. 

^ Comte : ' Scientific prevision of phenomena the test of true science.' 
So Froude : ' When we talk of science we mean something which can fore- 
see as well as explain.' Cf. Rocholl, 383 sq. Account for it as one will, 
or not at all, human actions are subject to prophecy to a vastly greater 
extent than is usually supposed. 

* Bisset's first essay proves, against Buckle and Comte, that moral 
forces, at least in many great crises of civilization, have been more decisive 
than intellectual. 

^ Cf. also Comte's presentation, in various chapters, of what he terms 
social dynamics. Wherever men have advanced at all, it has been by steps 
and stages nearly the same in the different races and ages. 

§ 15 Closer Conception 

See last §. 

History may be characterized as part of Anthropology, 
as the science of humanity viewed upon its spiritual 
side and in course of evolution. Its inner nature is 



14 HISTORY 

hence determined by that of man, and mainly in four 
particulars, viz. : (i) as spiritual and social, (2) as sus- 
ceptible to weal, (3) as moral, (4) as progressive. By 
synthesis of these points history will be found to secure 
not only its limits but also a veritable unity. Observe : 
I That no special history is identical with history, 
which latter is the resume and end of all special histo- 
ries.^ 2 That the greatly varying importance of special 
histories is determined according to the above four 
criteria. 3 That Jiistory can be presented by single 
writers or works, only in pieces. 

1 Freeman, v. Treitschke, and to a great extent Arno. I unduly identify 
history with political history; Augustine, Bossuet, ana Pres. Edwards, 
with religious. Better Guizot : history relates to man ' in_^all the careers 
where man's activity displays itself. There is unity in the life of a people 
and in the life of the race as in an individual life, but as his entire environ- 
ment and all the spheres of his work combine to form the character of a 
man, which is one and identical, so there is to the history of a people a 
unity based upon the variety of its entire existence.' And Bacon : ' Civil 
history in general has three special kinds, sacred, civil and literary, the 
last of which being left out, the history of the world appears, like the 
statue of Polyphemus, without its eye, the part that best shows the life and 
spirit of the person.' It is easy, as Draper does, and perhaps Guizot, to 
carry too far the analogy between individual and social life. Nations do 
not seem to grow old or decay from any intrinsic necessity. See Lotze, 
Mikrokosmus, VII, iii. Cf. Renan, ante, § 3, n. 2. Guizot notes well that 
society makes its political institutions instead of being made by them, so 
that political history must go out of itself to know itself. Sismondi, on the 
contrary, declares that ' government is the first cause of the character of 
peoples ' [pref. to Italian Republics], 



STUDY OF HISTORY 1 5 

§ i6 PosiTivisT Notion of History 

Fiske, Cosmic Philos., Pt. II, xvii. Draper, i. Buckle, I. 

If history is thus justified in claiming scientific status, 
Comte and Buckle expound this status too summarily. 
To them, history is part of nature, amenable to, and 
explicable by, law, in the same sense as nature at large. 
Acknowledging the, at present, great imperfection of 
history, and also the special difficulty here attending 
investigation owing to the little scope offered to experi- 
ment, they still expect such perfection of the science as 
will subject human events to the most accurate predic- 
tion. The Positive Philosophy has done eminent ser- 
vices to history, as elsewhere,^ but from its point of 
view, we believe, the real genius of the science cannot 
possibly be discovered. Man, as to what is truly char- 
acteristic of him, is not a product of nature, but of 
spirit ; and spirit, while not lawless, is subtle, mysteri- 
ous, deep, mainly operating by categories far more 
refined and complex than confront us in the sciences of 
space and time.^ 

1 The great merit of positivism is to have bred love of truth as v^^ell as 
a far more patient study of actual facts than once prevailed. Not the 
exact sciences alone are thus indebted to it, but even theology. This, not- 
withstanding the ludicrous apriorism and blunders which Bisset has fast- 
ened upon Comte. 

2 Lotze, Mikrokosfnus, VII, i, iii. 

§ 1/ Is THERE A Philosophy of History? 

See references at §§ lo, ii, 13, 15, 16 and 17. Adam, ch. i. 

This is a different and a far deeper question, though 
learly always confused with the preceding.^ We agree 



l5 HISTORY 

with Buckle that ' the actions of men and therefore of 
societies' are 'governed by fixed laws,'^ and are not 
' the result either of chance or of [arbitrary] superhuman 
interference ; ' also with the almost universal opinion 
that history, taken as a whole, has been a progress 
materially, intellectually and morally.^ Whence so 
grand and imposing a cosmical order? 

1 The propriety of this distinction is obvious. Thus the positivists, 
strongest champions of a science of history, in denying the possibiUty of 
knowing ultimate fact deny that of a philosophy of history. See next §. 
Ernst Laas is the only positivist who sees that positivism is precluded by 
its principles from making a genuine generalization. 

2 Adam excellently shows that the denial of chance is not the denial of 
an ultimate and supreme Will. See also Lotze, Mikrokosmus, VII, i. 

3 Many question the certainty of the continuance of this. So Roscher, 
Rumelin, and even Lotze. Scepticism here proceeds largely from Malthus, 
and there is nothing successfully to oppose to it except hope of the moral 
amelioration of men. Hard to frame an entirely satisfactory conception 
of progress. Cf. § 4, n, 2. Its best criterion is the elevation of the stand- 
ard by which men judge their own moral life. — Riimelin, Progress, says 
Herder, lies in the tendency to humanity, in the advancing strength of 
those powers which exalt man above the brute, the intellectual, moral, and 
rehgious impulses. See also Froude, Short Studies, II ser. : * On Progress.' 
Rocholl, 390, thinks no philosophy of history possible that is not based on 
grounds other than the mere teachings of history, e.g., on faith or on 
metaphysics. Riimelin maintains that although history shows ' no natural 
laws, expressing a mzisl, an infallible joining of discoverable conditions and 
results,' yet ' an increasing victory of mind over nature can be character- 
ized not indeed as a demonstrable causal law, but as an indubitable actual 
result of the history of our race thus far.' 

§ 18 Agnosticism 

spencer. First Principles. 

It is now in fashion to meet the above question in an 
agnostic spirit. Such as find no science of history 



STUDY OF HISTORY 1/ 

should, a fortiori, admit no philosophy, which is usually, 
though not always, the case.^ Many believe in a 
science, but reject all philosophy, of history. The 
agnostic party has a Positivist or Kantian ^ and an 
Eclectic section, the former denying all possibility of 
knowing ultimate causes, or things in se. The Eclectics, 
who include many professed believers in final cause, 
refer more to the limits of man's cognitive powers, yet 
often speak as if regarding the innermost reality of the 
universe incognizable by any intelligence. So, most 
commonly, in describing freedom and the sway of per- 
sonal initiative in history. To this agnostic theory, 
whatever its form, the reply is : Its assertion of our 
ignorance, as an account of man's present powers and 
attainments, is, in general, very just. Practically, at 
present, the facts are much as stated. But to predicate 
of any historical matter a final and strictly necessary 
unknowableness, whether the difficulty be placed in the 
object or in the faculty of knowledge, involves in prin- 
ciple a scepticism fatal to all science. 

1 Schlegel, W. von Humboldt, Augustine, Bossuet, and Shedd erect an 
inscrutable Providence into a principle of history. They thus, by faith, 
secure in a way a philosophy of history, but the limitation which they 
assign to our intelligence makes a deep science thereof impossible. Lenor- 
mant loudly proclaims himself a disciple of Bossuet. 

2 The positivist and the Kantian view at this point are practically one. 

§ 19 Our Conclusion 

Arnold, Appendix to Inaugural Lect. Loize, Mikrokosmus, VII, ii. Lattrent, Etudes, 

last vol. 

Not overlooking the defects of teleological theories as 
often apphed, we still hold that, if thorough, a teleologi- 



1 8 HISTORY 

cal view of history can, and that no other can, answer 
all the demands of reason. Such conviction by no 
means rests merely upon the order, progress and moral 
bent observable in history itself. The commonest logi- 
cal processes applied in natural science, unless arbi- 
trarily arrested, force thought down and back to the 
assumption of a Supreme Mind, eternal Abode of 
reason, as basis of the phenomenal world.^ From such 
a Being it were inconceivable that the universe should 
issue as a chaos, heaved forth by blind push. It, and 
history as the evolution of its spiritual side, must pos- 
sess, and internally, the properties of order, system, 
purpose. Nor can we rationally confine these proper- 
ties in time, or to main and special events. * Through 
the ages, one increasing purpose runs.' Equally strong 
considerations assure us that this purpose is moral.^ 

1 All work in natural science presupposes that nature, however deep we 
burrow, is knowable. This must mean that it exists, or else consists, in 
intellectual categories, and this, that nature's very penetralia are subject to 
cognition. Whose? 

2 ' One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat with distinct- 
ness: that the world is built somehow on moral foundations; that, in 
the long run, it is well with the good; in the long run, it is ill with the 
wicked.' — Froude. 

§ 20 Bearings of this Conception of History 

Lotze, Mikrokosnuis, VII, iii. 

It at once illustrates and confirms this thought of his- 
tory to observe that through it several important subsid- 
iary historical questions are either solved or alleviated. 
Thus : I Man's nature being spiritual, and its evolution 
a progress toward a moral goal, theories of his physical 



STUDY OF HISTORY I9 

origin and unity cease to be vital.^ 2 The universe 
being one, large influence upon man of his environment 
is to be expected and freely admitted. ^ 3 Apparent 
pauses in human progress may be interpreted as ele- 
ments in a rhythm. 4 Great men, playing, indeed, a 
weighty historical role, are effects as well as causes.^ 
5 Valuable light is shed on the question between opti- 
mism and pessimism.* 

1 Cf. Ch. II, § I. Lotze, Mikrokosmus, VII, iv. 

2 But Buckle and writers of his class have exaggerated this. Situa- 
tion did much to determine the early civilization of Greece, yet why were 
Italy, Spain and Britain so backward ? The correct statement is * that 
neither the Greeks in any other land nor any other people in Greece could 
have been what the Greeks in Greece actually were.' — Freeman. Human 
development requires occasioning causes, but it is humanity's distinctive 
task to create for itself the world wherein it is to find its highest enjoy- 
ments. — Lotze. ' That eternally blue heaven which laughs above Ionia has 
now for two centuries renounced those miraculous effects which it must 
have exerted once, and the havens and bays of the Phoenician coast have 
almost as long been inviting commerce and navigation in vain.' — Rumelin. 
Rich soil, easy means of communication and some rigor of climate, * arous- 
ing wants without making the satisfaction of them very difficult,' seem to 
have been the main natural determinants of early civilization. Neither 
frigid nor torrid zone originated civilization or tolerates it now in any fine 
form. Interesting how railroads and telegraphs have rendered civilization 
unprecedentedly independent of water-ways. China, India, Egypt, Mex- 
ico, Babylonia, were wondrously fertile. Herodotus dared not tell the 
extent of the Babylonian millet yield lest he should be disbelieved. Europe 
has I mile of coast to 33 square miles of territory; America i : 69; Austra- 
lia I : 73; Asia I : 105; Africa i : 152. — Honegger. 

3 * The study of history is the survey of events as related to great men.' 
— Grimm, Michelangelo, ch. ii. — No individual can guide his age without 
subserving its tendencies or its wants, yet ' those mighty men who through 
inventive genius or obstinate constancy of will have had a decided influ- 
ence on the course of history are by no means merely the offspring and 
outcome of their age.' — Lotze. So W^ James, Atlantic Mo., Oct., 1880, 
takes individual initiative in history as practically an inscrutable cause. 



20 HISTORY 

Carlyle was of the same view. On the other hand, in agreement with , 
Comte, Spencer, Stud, of Sociol., ch. ii. : ' Before the great man can re- 
make his society his society must make him. So that all those changes of 
which he is the proximate initiator have their chief cause in the genera- 
tions he descends from.' Lotze notices that great religions in particular 
always attach to a founder. 

* Any non-teleological or materialistic view of history must be pessi- 
mistic if logically carried out. Cf. Ch. II, § i6. Unitarian Rev., 1 885, 
545 sq. 

§ 21 Value of Historical Study 

Adains, Manual, Int. 

If the above is or approximates the correct notion of 
history, the earnest study of this, with however many dis- 
couragements beset, cannot but be profitable. It is so, 
in fact, upon any view. No science, no department of 
knowledge, can be thoroughly understood except in the 
light of its historical genesis and growth.^ Further, all 
right historical study tends to be : i A prime aid to 
culture, breadth of view and of sympathy.^ 2 A first- 
rate general discipline in reasoning of the practical kind 
most needed in the affairs of life. 3 An indispensable \ 
special preparation for the worthy handling of great 
questions in any of the sciences relating to man. Chief 
among the discouragements referred to are the uncer- 
tainty and indefiniteness of data, and the inexhaustible- 
ness of the field.^ 

1 Vhistoire, en effet, est la forme necessaire de la science de tout ce qui \ 
est somnis anx lois de la vie changeante et successive. La science des \ 
langues c'est Vhistoire des langties ; la science des litter atures et des philoso- \ 
phies, c'est Vhistoire des litteratures et des philosophies. Renan, Averroes j 
et Paverrois7?ie. \ 

2 * There is a book which youth may use to grow old, and the old to 
become young.' K. S. Zacharia, quoted by Roscher. 

^ Bisset, Essays on Historical Truth. Freeman, Methods of Historical 
Study, ii. 



study of history 21 

§ 22 Mode of Work 

Adams, Manual, 28 sq. Freeviaii, Methods. Stubbs, Med. and Mod. Hist., iv, v. 
Hall [Editor], Methods of Teaching Hist, [contains excellent bibliography]. 

For success in this course the first requisite is dih- 
gence. Another is to remember that subjects, not tasks, 
are to be mastered. In historical reading thoughtfulness 
is more important than bulk.^ Well-written small vol- 
umes upon historical subjects abound, helpful in utiliz- 
ing time.2 Of larger works read, and by all means 
purchase, only the best. Memory of main dates in 
modern history is important, but dates alone are not 
history. So of abridgments, co7ispectus, historical tables 
and the like : they are valuable auxiliaries, but in no 
sense substitutes for histories proper.^ Ploetz's Epi- 
tome is the best conspectus, and should be in every 
student's hands. Fisher's Outlines are the best univer- 
sal history in our language. Adams's Manual, with the 
bibliographies at the heads of our Chapters, will name 
sufficient literature. Another aid, quite indispensable 
to correct historical knowledge, is Geography, constant 
reference to which should attend all historical reading. 
Freeman's Historical Geography is the best work extant 
in this regard, though its maps are for Europe only. 
Labberton's is the only historical atlas which covers 
the entire historical field. Jt is excellent.* Serviceable, 
though less directly, is also all acquaintance with Eth- 
nology, Philology, Political Economy, Politics, Statistics, 
Physical Geography, Art, Numismatics.^ 

1 Bacon's apothegm : ' Read not to contradict and confute, nor to 
believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh 
and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and 



22 HISTORY 

some few to be chewed and digested.' Hobbes used to say ' that if he had 
read as much as other men he should have continued still as ignorant as 
other men,' 

2 Epochs of Hist., Ep. of Ecclesiastical Hist., American Statesmen Ser., 
American Commonwealth Ser., Harper's Half-Hour Ser. and Handy Ser., 
New Plutarch Ser., The Story of the Nations. Hist'l novels may here be 
mentioned, and those of the best sort, like Scott's, George Eliot's Romola 
and Charles Reade's Cloister and Hearth, recommended. Those by Ebers, 
Dahn, Hausrath and Eckstein are valuable but less masterly, tending far 
more to assign modern thoughts and feelings to antique characters. 

^ * How index-learning turns no student pale, 
Yet holds the eel of knowledge by the tail.' 

* For notice of other atlases, Adams, Manual, 68. Halsey's Genealogi- 
cal and Chronological Chart is very serviceable. 

^ On the studies auxiliary to history. Freeman, Methods, i. 

§ 23 The Partition of History 

Freeman, Methods, Inaug. and i. Motnmsen, Rome, ch i. Stubbs, Med. and Mod. 
Hist., iv. Zeller, Greek Philos., Int., iv. 

History objective is continuous, knowing no periods 
or breaks,^ but in the study and exposition of history 
divisions are practically a necessity, owing to the finite- 
ness of our mental powers. They should be as little 
artificial as possible. A highly convenient primary 
sundering is into ancient and modern history, the turn- 
ing-point being 375 a.d., the beginning of the fatal 
barbarian irruption into the Roman Empire, which sup- 
plied the last essential ingredient of present western 
civilization. The most facile cleavage of ancient his- 
tory is ethnological. That of modern is chronological, 
into periods : I, from the beginning of the barbarian 
movement to the discovery of America, 375-1492; H, 
from the discovery of America to the Declaration of 
American Independence, 1492-1776; HI, from the Dec- 



STUDY OF HISTORY 23 

laration of Independence to the present time. Mem- 
orable points in I : the Hegira of Mohammed, 622 ; the 
Battle of Poitiers, 732 ; the Roman coronation of Karl 
the Great, 800 ; the Treaty of Verdun, 843 ; the termini 
of the Crusades, 1096, 1270. In II : Luther's excommu- 
nication, 1520; the Peace of Westphalia, 1648; the ter- 
mini of the English Commonwealth, 1649, 1660; the 
English Revolution of 1688; the Seven Years' War, 
1 756-1 763. In III : the Launching of the present Con- 
stitution of the United States, 1789; the Outbreak of 
the French Revolution, 1789; the Vienna Congress, 
1815; the American War, 1861-1865 ; the Battle of 
Sedan, 1870; the Establishment of the present French 
Republic, 1870, and of the German Empire, 1871. 

1 So Freeman, also Zeller, as above. For grounds contra, Mommsen 
and Stubbs, as above. Certainly one may point out great sui generis 
reaches of history, and decisive turning-points. Such were, 1492, the 
coronation of Otho the Great in 962, and the raising of the siege of Vienna 
by Sobieski in 1683. Coptic chronology dates everything from 284 A.D., 
*year of the martyrs' to Diocletian's persecution. Ranke, IVeltgesch., 
Theil iv, emphasizes 602 A.D., when the powerful Emperor Maurice suc- 
cumbed to his troops and to the city of Constantinople, revolutionizing 
everything in the Orient, estranging the Balkan peninsula by peace with 
the Avars [604], recognizing the independence of Lombard Italy and 
emancipating old Rome from the new. Sismondi makes much of the year 
1000 A.D., when men gave up the idea of bringing all humanity into one 
monarchy, which Dagobert, the Caliphs, Karl Great and Otho Great had 
attempted. He dates modern history from looo. Histoire de la chute de 
V empire rotnain, I, 15. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER II 

Ploetz, Epitome of Universal H.** Sayce [latest and best brief 
account in English], Ancient Empires of the East. Maspero, Histoire 
ancienne des peuples de V Orient ^'^ Osborn, Ancient Egypt in the L't 
of Mod. Discovery. Mommsen, H. of Rome, Vol. I. Fisher, Outlines 
of Universal H. Myers, Outlines of Ancient H. Rawlinson, Manual 
of Ancient H.*; Origin of Nations; Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient 
Eastern World [Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia — 4 vols., also 3] ; 
Sixth Great Oriental M. [Parthia]; Seventh do. [New Persian Empire]; 
Anc. Eg., 2 vols. Duncker, H. of Antiquity, 6 vols, [the ablest single 
authority extant]. Lenormant, Histoire ancienne de P Orie7it** 4 vols, 
[there is an abrege\ ; Beginnings of H. L. and Chevalier, Manual of 
Ancient H., 2 vols. DUmichen [in Oncken's ser.], Geschichte des alten 
Aegyptens** Lehmann, Gesch. d. alten Indiens ** [also in Oncken. 
The works of this ser. are all of value]. Smith [P.], H. of the World 
from Earliest T. to Fall of Western Empire, 3 vols. Ranke, Universal 
H.,* I. ' Egypt,' ' Babylonia,' * Persia,' ' China,' * India,' ' Phoenicia,' and 
* Israel,' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica [all articles of the highesl^ability] . 
Smith [G.], Assyria. Sayce, Babylonia. Birch, Egypt. Vaux, Persia. 
[The 4 by Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowl. Less accurate, • Egypt,' 
'Assyria,' 'Persia,' 'Chaldea,' 'Greece,' 'Rome,' and 'Carthage,' in Story 
of the Nations Ser.] Ebers, Egypt, 2 vols. Wilkinson, Ancient Egyp- 
tians, 3 vols. Brugsch, H. of Egypt under the Pharaohs,* 2 vols. Daven- 
port-Adams, Eg. Past and Pres. Williams, Middle Kingdom [China], 
2 vols. Perrot and Chipiez, H. of Ancient Art ** [Chaldea and As- 
syria, 2 vols., Egypt, 2 vols.]. Menard, Histoire des ancienjtes peuples 
de V Orient. De Lanoye, Ramses the Great.* Maine, Anc't Law*; 
Early H. of Institutions *; Village Communities. Fontane, Histoire Uni- 
verselle [16 vols. ' Vedic India,' 'The Iranians,' 'The Egypts,' and 'The 
Asiatics 'are the first four]. Oldenberg, Buddha.** MaiViQWt, A brege 
de P histoire d^ Egypt [best account in any one vol.]. 'Records of the 
Past ' ** [Eng. tr. of Ass'n and Eg'n documents. London. . Bagster. 
II vols.]. Niebuhr, Vortr'dge ueber alte Geschichte [tr., London, 1852]. 
Grote, Greece, Pt. II, xvi-xxi, inc. Heeren, Hist'l Researches, I-III. 

On Prehistoric Times: Baldwin, Prehistoric Nations. Lubbock, 
Prehistoric T.; Origin of Civilization. Tyler, Primitive Culture; Re- 
searches into the Early H. of Mankind. De Mortillet, Prehistoriqtie. 
Dumontier, Les stations de l''ho?nf?ie prehistoriqiie. Honegger, Kulttir- 
geschichte,* I. Bray, Anthropology. Joly, Man before Metals. Pack- 
ard, in Gately's World's Progress. Peschel, V'dlkerkunde* De Na- 
daillac, Prehistoric America. Keary, Dawn of FL; Primitive Belief. 



CHAPTER II 

THE OLD EAST 



§ I JUVENTUS MUNDI 

Lubbock, Prehist. Times, ch. xii, Loize, Mikrokosi7tus, VII, iii. Lyell, Geol. Evid. of 
the Antiq. of Man. Honegger, Ktdturgeschichte , I, 153 sqq. Cf. also his Kate- 
chismus d. KulUirgesch. Ranke, Weltgesch. I, 30 sq. Keary, Dawn of Hist. 

Four topics in Anthropology have been much dis- 
cussed : the antiquity ^ of the human race, its unity in 
essence, its unity in geographical origin,^ and its earliest 
intellectual condition. Upon the last two points there 
is still great disagreement, some authorities maintaining, 
others denying, that the cradle of the race was single ; 
some, again, affirming that the earliest human ages were 
an intellectual decline ; others, that they formed an as- 
cent from an intellectual condition much like that of 
brutes. Respecting the other two heads there is, and 
can be, little doubt, viz. : that humanity is one in essence 
and nature, and that its life upon our planet, in at least 
some of its branches, reaches an immense antiquity. 
The general intellectual progress of mankind is equally 
certain so far as regards the historical ages. In the 
main, to the extent of present knowledge concerning 
primitive man, history abuts upon Natural History.^ 
Pleistocene man is matter only for the latter science, 
which is as good as true of many peoples in every age, 
and even at present. Distinguish then the periods 



26 THE OLD EAST 

(i) of man's Natural History, (2) between the begin- 
ning of objective and of subjective history, (3) after the 
rise of subjective history, which as a rule reaches back 
in case of any given people, to the date of the oldest 
contemporary written sources relating to that people, 
in some instances a little further.* 

1 Anthropologists vary from 8000 to 300,000 years in estimates of this. 
There is no doubt that man appeared in Europe and America before the 
close of the glacial period. Astronomers [CroU, Geikie] put this 80,000- 
100,000 years ago; geologists so low as 8000, 10,000, or 15,000 years. 
Dr. L. E. Hicks places man's advent not later than the beginning of the 
Champlain period, at least 20,000 years ago, and thinks it may have been 
earlier, at least in Asia and Western North America, where the genus pos- 
sibly arrived sooner than on either Atlantic shore. Grant Allen believes 
that man was present in miocene time, and Pres, Warren [Paradise Found] 
seems to agree with him. A.'s evidence is that numberless artificially 
chipped flints lie in miocene deposits. Boyd Dawkins admits this, but 
views the flints as the work of apes. He makes the river drift or pleis- 
tocene the oldest man yet proved to have existed, but thinks some of his 
remains pre-glacial. Both Dawkins and Evans deny that any miocene 
human fossils have been authenticated either in Italy, as argued by Cap- 
ellini, or in America, as maintained by Whitney. De Nadaillac agrees 
with D, & E. Best general discussion is still Lyell [3d ed. Lond., 1883]. 
Cf. also Internat. Rev., Sep. 1882; Nation, 1883, p. 300; * B. C. Y.,' Re- 
mote Antiq. of Man not Proven [Lond., 1882]. 

2 Lenormant, Hist, ancietiite, I, discusses this most fully. He is a pro- 
nounced monogenesist, as are Peschel, Sayce, and Rawlinson [Manual, 5]. 
Reinsch too, who, however, locates the cradle in Central Africa. The 
boldest polygenesist is a writer in No. 17 of * Atisland^ for 1875. ^^ 
believes in eight cradles, — Chinese-Japanese, Indian-Malay, Iranian- 
Semitic, Egyptian, European, Arabic, Aztec, and Peruvian. — Rocholl, 379. 
Lotze, Mik. VII, iv, shows how slight the moral consequence of this ques- 
tion. Maspero, 132, says all early tradition points to a single cradle. Cf. 
on this, § 5, n. 2. Kant in one place pronounces for monogenesis, in 
another thinks it scarcely consonant with nature's usual care : ' The first 
man would drown himself in the first pool he saw,' Anthropologie, Th. 
I,E. 



THE OLD EAST 2/ 

3 Ritter beautifully names animals man's older brothers. I.e., so far back 
as we can distinctly trace, primitive man led but an animal life. Mining 
and incipient manufacturing, villages and government might antedate 
moral life and so belong to man's Natural H. rather than to history. Ch. 
I, § 3. ' Hardly disputable that our civilization must have grown up from 
simple and indigenous beginnings along the path of a gradual and much 
interrupted development.' — Lotze. There is, however, as yet, no scientific 
proof that man was evolved from the ape, even physically, the oldest skulls 
known indicating higher intelligence than those of some races now existent. 
* The evolutionist is right as to the method of progress, but the believer in 
special creations is right as to the cause of progress. God is the author of 
all life changes, but he has chosen to produce them by the continuous 
action of natural forces. Terrestrial life is both an evolution and a crea- 
tion.' Hicks. 

* Being traced, that is, by means of archaeology and philology; but 
contemporary written sources alone can assure a connected account. — 
Mommsen, Rome, I, i; Max MuUer, Contemp. Rev., Oct., 1882; Free- 
man, Sketch of Eur. H., 31. Lepsius hails it as the distinctive supe- 
riority of Egyptian history, that its contemporary sources, not yet half 
explored, are so complete. Cf. Lenormant, Hist, anc, prcef. vii. Sallust 
had seen native histories of Carthage, which have since perished. 



§ 2 The Oldest History 

Mahaffy, Prolegomena to Anc. Hist. Lenormant, prsef. to Hist. anc. 

The Study of history is no longer permitted to begin 
with Greece and Rome.^ Ancient civilization, it has 
been found, had much solidarity. ^ From the newest 
investigations, oriental history appears almost as closely 
bound up with classical as this is with modern. What 
was once mere suspicion of such continuity, thanks to 
men like Champollion and Rawlinson,^ has become cer- 
tainty. In many lines the connection has been traced, 
as Greek and Etruscan* art to Nineveh. Deciphered 
hieroglyphics and wedge-characters^ disclose a new 
world. Forty centuries of Egyptian life and deeds, 



28 THE OLD EAST 

mostly unknown before, now lie open to the light. Egyp- 
tian affairs, like those of a modern state, may be studied 
from original and contemporary documents. The nature 
and development of Egyptian art and religion can be 
scanned to the details. Of Assyria the resurrection has 
been about equally complete, throwing the most valu- 
able and unexpected light upon the Bible and upon the 
entire march of Asiatic and early European civilization. 

1 Freeman, Rede Lect., Oxford Inaug., and elsewhere, insists strongly 
and well on the unity of all history, yet inconsistently seems willing to 
take European history as a whole by itself. This involves the same essen- 
tial error against which he is so loud, of sharp division between ancient 
and modern. 

2 Especially cannot Jewish history be understood alone. * Many relig- 
ious ideas and stories commonly regarded especially Jewish are found on 
Babylonian clay tablets. The Sabbath, name and all, is Babylonian.' — 
Fried. Delitzsch. Max Mliller adm. no doubt that by Solomon's time even 
India was in communication with Palestine. Sanscrit words occur in O. 
T. Solomon's judgment regarding the child claimed by two mothers is 
current in India. — Contemp. Rev., Oct., 1882. M. assures us that many 
other similar accounts are common to India and the West, as that of the 
ass in the lion's skin, in Plato's Cratylus. Solomon's Song could almost 
have been borrowed, so close the resemblance, from the Egyptian love- 
songs rendered by Maspero in the Journal asiatique, Janvier, 1883. The 
whole of Asia, including China, was almost one land. 

3 Champollion le Jeune, so called to distinguish him from ChampoUion 
Figeac, his elder brother, also an Egyptologist of mark. The Rawlinson 
named is Sir Henry, not Professor George, the author of the Manual and 
other works mentioned in the bibliography. 

4 Mommsen inclines to minimize Asiatic influence in early Italian civ- 
ilization, and thinks it was exerted altogether through Greece. 

^ Hieroglyphics, Egypt; wedge-characters, Assyria. Wiedemann says 
that we can trace consecutively the march of Egyptian history from be- 
tween 4000 and 3000 B.C., that of Mesopotamia, not quite so thoroughly, 
owing to the greater difficulty of the Keilschrift, from the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Maspero : * In a few years Egyptologists will decipher the historic 
and literary texts in their hands with as much certitude as Latinists read 



THE OLD EAST 29 

Cicero or Titus Livy.' ' One could, from the accounts gathered in the 
tombs, reconstruct the royal almanac of Khufu's court down to its minut- 
est details.' Of Assyria : ' In less than thirty years [from the discovery of 
Nineveh by Botta in 1846] a new world of unknown tongues and peoples 
has opened itself to study, while thirty centuries of history have come forth 
from the tombs and reappeared in the blaze of day.' 



§ 3 Its Bearers 

Lotze, Mik.y VII, v. Freejnauy Hist'l Geog., ch. i, § 3. 

The historical nations of antiquity were very few, 
including, besides Greece and Rome, merely China and 
India with the members of the later Persian empire, 
viz.. Babylonia, Assyria, Phoenicia, Lydia, Israel, and 
Egypt. Of these lands mark that : i They formed the 
theatre of history's most stupendous military move- 
ments and conquests.^ 2 All their peoples save 
the Chinese, were Caucasians ^ ; these, Mongolians. 
3 Among the Caucasians the Hamite family earliest 
developed culture and empire, then the Semites,^ third 
the Aryans, the last finally playing by far the most 
important part. 4 Each of the ancient civilized nations 
was favored not only by great agricultural and mineral 
resources, but in particular by rare facilities for com- 
merce, while on the other hand some non-historic 
peoples of those times enjoyed these natural advan- 
tages in as high a degree as they.* 5 China and India, 
the eastern section of the old historic world, were 
the special home of stationary institutions ; western 
civilization was even then distinguished for life and 
movement.^ 

1 Those of Chedorlaomer, Ninus, Semiramis, Tiglath-pilezer, Assurbani- 
pal, Ramses II, Cyrus, Cambyses, Alexander, Omar, Haroun, Mahmoud, 



30 THE OLD EAST 

Jenghis Khan, Tamerlane, Godfrey de Bouillon, Saladin. One might add 
Napoleon and Mehemet Ali. 

2 The oldest known inhabitants of the Euphrates Valley were partly 
Turanian [non-Caucasian], in part Hamitic [Lower Tigris Valley], in part 
Semitic [Assur]. But few Turanian traits remained at the time whence 
their connected history can be traced, unless with Oppert we regard the 
basis of the Assyrian language Turanian. Cf. § 9. This early eminence 
of the Turanian stock seems to have been destined to be its last. 

^ Hommel, Die Semitischen Volker u. Sprachen. 2 Bde. Hamites 
first, i.e., in Egypt and Babylonia; then the Semites, viz., the Lydians and 
also, substantially, the Assyrians and Babylonians during the period of 
their great history. Aryans last, i.e., the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. 
* It is a growing conviction of ethnologists and philologists that the primi- 
tive home of the white-skinned population which first spoke the languages 
of the Aryan family, was in the neighborhood of the Baltic, and that this 
population still survives in its purest form in the southern parts of Sweden 
and Norway.' — Sayce. The old Egyptians, from whom the modern Copts 
have come, appear to have been of the same stock as the Iberians and 
Etruscans and the present Basques and Berbers. This, to be sure, is still 
sub judice. F. W. Newman's Libyan Vocabulary [Lond., 1882] shows all 
the present languages of No. Africa to be closely related to the Semitic. 
It is certain, at any rate, that the Etruscan was no branch of Aryan speech. 
Pauli, Etrusk. Forschuugen, pt. iii. The Semites [of Assyria-Babylon] 
led civilization from the 13th cent. B.C. to the 7th and even the 6th. They 
then yielded to the Aryans, though never ceasing to be active, and at 
length, after Mohammed, placed themselves at the head again. Subse- • 
quently to this occurred the renaissance of Mongol [non-Caucasian] power * 
under Jenghis Khan [1206 A.D., and later] and Tamerlane [c. 1402]. 

^ See Gryzanowski's comparison [N. A. Rev., Oct., 1871] of Sardinia 
with Sicily, showing that everything but man has favored Sardinia. — James, 
Atlantic Mo., Oct., 1880; Gordon, CHmate in Relation to Org. Nature 
[Vic. Inst. Ser.]. Notice upon the map of ancient Eg. how civilization 
clung to the Nile. But large parts of Arabia were conditioned as favorably 
for civilization as any in the world, without producing it. 

° Klemm divides peoples into active and passive. Guizot, unjustly, , 
ranks Egypt no less than India as passive, an estimate less and less possi- 
ble as Egypt's genius becomes known. But if Egypt was less sluggish 
than India, it was more so than Assyria, Phoenicia or Greece. 



the old east 3 i 

§ 4 Eastward the Course of Empire 

Honegger, Kttlturgesch. I, 53 sqq. 

While viewed at any given moment ancient civiliza- 
tion increases in brilliancy from east to west, the chron- 
ological progress of its origination is rather from west 
to east.^ Egypt possesses a high ci?vilization at least 
twelve centuries before our earliest record of a Chinese 
emperor. Babylon is a centre of light while the fathers 
of the Hindoos still tend their flocks in Iran. The 
Hindoos too must have carried an advanced culture 
with them down the Indus, the Sanscrit having been a 
perfect literary language by 1500 B.C. Yet the Vedas 
are not the oldest literature. One part of the Egyptian 
papyrus 'Prisse'^ hails from before 3000, and hiero- 
glyphic writing itself is older than history. This papy- 
rus is an ethical document. The peoples ^ from whom 
sprung the Chaldeans in Babylonia had a theology, a 
regular law-code and the rudiments of writing. The 
earliest certified pieces of Chinese literature scarcely 
reach further back than the thirteenth century. In 
Egypt, again, under dynasty iii, so early as 2800 at 
least, not only agriculture and very many difficult 
mechanic arts but even several of the fine arts were in 
an amazingly forward state, implying high intelligence 
and thorough social organization.* The great Sphinx 
of Ghizeh and the temple near it quite antedate history, 
and are the oldest creations of man.^ Scientific astron- 
omy goes back in Egypt at least to 2782,^ in Babylon 
to 2234, in China only to the twelfth century. 

1 Some earliest historical dates are, approximately : for Egypt, 3892; 
for Babylon, 2500; for China, 2400 (less certain than the others); Abra- 



32 THE OLD EAST 

ham, 2000; for oldest Vedic literature, 1600; Moses, also arrival of Hin- 
doos at the Ganges, 1300; for Assyria, 1200; for Phoenicia, 1050; first 
Olympiad, 776; Roma condita, 753 [Varro], 752 [Cato]; for Lydia, 724; 
for Persia, 558; Buddha, 550. No connected Biblical chronolog)' earlier 
than King Saul, about iioo. The date given for Eg. is Lepsius's and is 
quite within bounds. Boeckh says 5700; Mariette, 5004; Benloew, 4500; 
Lenormant, ' more than 4000.' Oppert says : * not 40 but 70 centuries 
look down from the pyramids'; Maspero : '5000 years between dates of 
our earliest and our latest Egypt'n documents.' In giving so high figures 
Lenormant, Mariette, and Maspero seem to follow Manetho, whom German 
writers discredit mainly on a prioi'i grounds. — Len. Hist, aiic, II, 71 ; cf 
§ 6. These dates resemble little enough those from Kohlrausch's tables 
which all the schoolboys of Europe had to give thirty years ago : creation, 
3484 B.C.; deluge, 2328; Noah's sons, 1656, etc. The Jewish calendar 
pretends to reckon from the creation of the world, which it places 3760 
years and 3 months B.C. Most partisans of the Samaritan text of the O. T. 
put Christ's birth in the 4305th year of the world; the LXX in the 5270th 
or the 5873d, according to mode of reckoning. The fact is that the Bible 
does not determine primordial human chronology or assign any date for 
the creation of man. So Rawlinson [G.] and, most emphatically, Lenor- 
mant [v.'ho was a devout Catholic] HisL anc, I, 7, 209 sqq. On Abraham'' s 
date, Zeitschr. fiir VolksivirUchaft, etc., XXIII, 2, 141, which puts his 
death in 2037 B.C. As date for Moses, Poole and Rawhnson say 1652, 
Bunsen and Lepsius 1320. Honegger believes that safe chronology regard- 
ing China does not reach beyond the 8th or 9th cent. B.C. Objective 
Phoenician h, probably goes back at least to 2000 B.C., but we cannot fix 
dates there anterior to 1050. The Tyrian priests dated their city from 
2750. — Maspero, 192. The Homeric poems in their present form are not 
older than 850. Ranke makes Pheidon [d. 660] founder of the naval 
power of Argos, the earliest historical character of Greece. The Hera- 
cleidae, the heroes of the Spartan-Messenian war and even Lycurgus he 
regards as sagenhaft. Nor will he concede that any Roman date is strictly 
historical till the Gallic invasion, 364 a. v. c, 389 B.C. Weltgesch., II, 8, n. 

^ This hoary document, now in the Bibliotheque Natiotiale at Paris, 
was composed, its oldest part under Snefru of dynasty iii, the rest under 
dynasty v. Our copy is perhaps contemporary but certainly not later 
than dynasty xii. — Lenormant; Maspero, 85. It is the oldest book in the 
world, 

3 Maspero, 139; cf 146 sqq. Lenorm., Hist, anc, I, 363. 

* In the grotto-tombs of Benihassan, dating from Snefru of dyn. iii, 



THE OLD EAST 33 

these arts are pictured as in exercise. — Weber, Welfgesch., I, 52, 54; 
Lenorm., II, 67 Wiedemann refers all this to before 3500. 

^ Unless, as Wiedemann judges, some statues are older. 

6 The figure 2782 is gotten by reckoning back from 1322 B.C., when we 
know that the Egyptian Sirius year and civil year coincided. Assuming 
their dissidence to have been \ day, 1460 years before 1322, i.e., in 2782, 
they would have coincided previously. 2234 is from Simplicius, who de- 
clared that when Alexander reached Babylon astronomical observations 
there went back 1903 years. Chinese history records that in the 12th cen- 
tury B.C., 'Tschin Koning, in the city of I>y, measured the length of the 
sun's shadow at solstice with the utmost precision.' 



§ 5 Diversity and Unity 

Motnvisen, Rome, I, 42, 46, 275. Lotze, Mik., VII, iii. ' Calendar,' in Encyc. Brit. 

Primitive civilization is largely homogeneous, at once 
result and proof of mankind's unity. The use in com- 
mon of speech, the existence of sun-worship, of a lunar 
calendar and so on, among many peoples, do not show 
their culture to have had a common historical root.^ 
Yet so far as concerns Asiatic civilization we must 
suppose either unity of origin or great international 
influence.^ Everywhere here we find (i) a separation 
of the world's history into four great periods, (2) about 
2500 B.C. regarded as a special epoch, (3) a tradition of 
a flood, (4) a lunar calendar, involving the seven-day 
week, and the 'nycthemera.' ^ The Babylonians, Hin- 
doos and Chinese further agreed in employing a sixty- 
year period. The Egyptians on the other hand began 
the day at midnight, had a week of ten days, a month 
of thirty and a year of twelve such months, though 
corrected by the sun.* They had an Apis-cycle of 
twenty-five years, a thirty-year cycle and a Sirius-cycle, 
no one of which was known in Asia. Also they had no 



34 THE OLD EAST 

tradition whatever of a flood. But Egyptian weights 
and measures agreed with the Babylonian, and Egyptian 
caste and worship of animals remind us of India. 
These considerations, joined with still weightier ones, 
ethnological and philological, make it nearly certain 
that even Egyptian civilization, though in very ancient 
form and times, came from Asia, The existence of a 
commanding international influence later is beyond 
question, Egypt and Babylon its especial centres. The 
Phoenician alphabet, basis of all others, is but a modi- 
fication of signs taken from the Egyptian hieratic 
speech.^ 

1 Many ideas and usages may be common to several peoples without 
indicating that such peoples had common descent or even intercourse.. 
Attention to this obvious truth would have saved sciolists much pains. 
Thus among the aborigines upon the River Darling, New So. Wales, chil- ' 
dren succeed to rank of mother, as in Old Egypt. So of many if not 
most of the myths, proverbs, habits, etc., having nearly world-wide preva- 
lence, canvassed by Tylor, Early H. of Mankind, Pt, II, viii, ix. Cf. Miss 
Emerson's Indian Myths [Boston, 1884]. Zeller, Greek Philosophy, I, 
p. 42, adverts to some strong resemblances between Greek and Asiatic 
philos., unaccompanied by any proof of historical connection. Intercourse 
will account for more than community of origin. The story of Moses hid- 
den in the bulrushes is almost exactly related of Saryoukin and of Semir- 
amis, — Lenorm., Hist, anc, I, 175, 277. On accounts of the flood and of 
the Tower of Babel, Maspero, 160 sqq. Lotze thinks that even the flood- 
tradition may have arisen independently in various centres, among the 
American Indians as among the Mesopotamian Cushites, Not so in all 
such cases: 'Our nursery tales contain echoes from the very earliest 
antiquity; the same fables that exercise our reflection in youth were once 
told in India, Persia and Greece, and many popular superstitions of 
to-day have their root in heathendom.' 

2 Sayce does not agree with Lenormant in placing Eden, according to 
Zend tradition, in the highlands of Hindu Kush, but rather with Delitzsch 
[ Wo lag Paradies ?'\, \v\io locates it in Babylonia. Sayce sees no trace or 
possibility of contact between the early Aryans of the far East and the 



THE OLD EAST 35 

Accadians and Semites of the Euphrates Valley, until the time, gth cen- 
tury B.C., when Phoenician ships traded to Ophir and the Assyrian mon- 
archy came into relation with the Medes. He regards the resemblance 
between our account of Paradise and that of the Persians as due to 
borrowing by them in later times. Academy, Oct. 7, 1882. 

3 * Night-day,' 24 hours, beginning with evening. Natural, because the 
new moon, first noticed at evening, began the month. ' Chodhesh,' in 
Hebrew, means both ' new moon ' and ' lunar month.' The seven-day 
week probably originated from the moon's phases, or from division of the 
days in a periodic lunation by 4, though in Babylon, at a late period, it 
seems to have been connected with the seven planets. Since the captivity 
the Jews have always used a lunar calendar, more or less modified by 
notice of solar changes. Wolf-Baudissin, ^ Mond^ in Herzog-Plitt's 
Realencyc. All Mohammedan peoples also still retain the lunar year, 
about 1 1 days shorter than the solar. 

* All of which proves that the Egyptians once possessed great intel- 
lectual independence. To them the entire civilized world is indebted for 
modes of reckoning time. The Julian day was from them, only 11' 12" 
too long, which Pope Gregory XIII, in 1582, corrected so closely that 
3333J years will be required again to bring an error of a day. 

^ See § 13. 

§ 6 Egypt 

Duncker^ B. I. * Manetho' and 'Egypt,' in Encyc. Brit. Sayce, Ancient Empires, i. 
ToJHpkins et al., Recent Egyptological Research. 

The history of Ancient Egypt proper, of Egypt under 
the Pharaohs, ends with the victory of Cambyses, 525. ^ 
There was an Old Kingdom and a New, divided by cen- 
turies and with very distinct characteristics. At first 
there existed many separate states, which were at length 
fused into two great principalities, Lower Egypt to 
the point of the delta and Upper Egypt to the first 
cataract. Later both came under the one sway^ of the 
[irst historic king, Mena, founder of the Old Kingdom. 
The earlier petty states became nomes or counties,^ and 
:he efforts of the vassal counts after independence and 



36 THE OLD EAST 

empire form a leading element in all Egyptian history. 
In not a few cases accounts of rival kings greatly aggra- 
vate the task of chronologists. 

1 5000 (at least), beginnings of Egyptian civilization. 3892, Mena 
founds Old Kingdom. 3000, the great pyramids. 2090-1830, Hycsos, 
sway over all Egypt. 1580, Hycsos driven from Lower Egypt; New 
Kingdom. 1 599-1 560, Tahout-mes III; Golden age; Dynasties xviii and 
xix. 724-671, Ethiopian domination. 671, Assur-a'h-iddin's (Assyrian) 
conquest. 525, Cambyses' conquest. 332, Alexander's conquest. 30, 
Octavian : Egypt a Roman province. The older dates here given accord 
with Duncker's, and are within bounds. Henne places Mena 6117B.C. ; 
Mahaffy, 5000; Brugsch, 4393; Hofmann, 2182. Well might the old 
priest of Sa'is say : ' O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children and 
there is never an old man who is a Hellene. In mind you are all young. 
There is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, 
nor any science hoary with age.' — Plato, Timaeus, 22. It is customary to 
reduce the higher dates of Egyptian chronology by doubling more or 
fewer of Manetho's dynasties; i.e., taking them as parallel. Lenormant 
declares that no fact has been adduced to prove the rightfulness of this. 
He agrees with Mariette in regarding them as serial, believing that Manetho 
omitted all but the legitimate ones. The ablest discussion is by Mariette, 
reproduced for substance by Lenorm., Hist. anc. II, 32 sqq. Maspero and 
Mahaffy seem to favor this theory, and Sayce adopts it. — Ancient Empires, 
16. For the difficulties of the subject, see the articles named above under 
the caption of this §. One trouble is that the Egyptians themselves reck-| 
oned from no era. None but astronomers kept in mind 2782 [§ 4, n. 6]. 

2 The kings after Mena were called ' lords of the two realms,' and the : 
crown, ' the double crown.' 

^ As occurred in Saxon England. On this phase of Egyptian history, , 
Lenorm., Hist, anc, II, 53-64, 160, 297; Maspero, 177. 

§ 7 The Old Kingdom 

Osborn, Ancient Egypt. Rawlinson, Anc. Egypt. ' Egypt,' in Encyc. Brit. 

This had Memphis for capital. Besides Mena, Snefru, 
of dynasty iii, conqueror of Arabia Petraea, and Khufu,^ 
Kha-f-Ra and Men-ke-Ra, of dynasty iv, builders of the 



THE OLD EAST 37 

great pyramids, were its most famous kings. Tablets 
from Snefru's time ^ show us art wonderfully advanced, 
and civilization in general as completely organized as at 
the Persian or the Macedonian conquest, with a physi- 
ognomy thoroughly its own and marks of a long past. 
Egyptian as a separate language, also hieroglyphic writ- 
ing, have attained perfection.^ Khufu's pyramid, awful 
in its proportions,^ the most stupendous of all human 
works, reveals a practical skill in engineering and archi- 
tecture never yet outdone. Drawing and sculpture in 
some respects already approach final perfection. With 
dynasty iv the glory of the Old Kingdom attained its 
height. Rebellions and civil wars ensued ; the con- 
quests in Arabia and Nubia were lost, and from the vith 
to the xith dynasty civilization itself wellnigh suffered 
eclipse. Meantime the vassal power of Thebes grew, 
until its prince, the renowned Monthu-hotpu,^ subjected 
all Egypt, even the capital, to his sway, preparing the 
way for dynasty xii, and for what Leriormant styles the 
Middle Kingdom. Art and science now bloom again. 
Dynasties xi and xii cover the special period of Egyp- 
tian internal improvements and development in the 
useful arts. Men weave, make pottery, blow glass, work 
gold. Moeris, the Labyrinth and Benihassan ^ are now 
constructed. The religion of Osiris,^ also the Book of 
the Dead,^ originated under these dynasties. Dynasty 
xii reconquered Nubia and the Sinaitic peninsula. Then 
civilization again entere;d penumbra, and at length, with 
the victorious invasion of the Hycsos,^ became totally 
obscured. 

1 The Cheops, Chefren and Mycerinus, of Herodotus. It is better, 
where possible, to transliterate Egyptian names, of doing which there are 
several modes. Maspero uses *w' for Lenormant's 'f.' 



38 THE OLD EAST 

2 Not later, and probably much earlier, than 2800 B.C. Cf. § 4, n. 4. 

3 We have from this period a picture of a scribe at work with pen, ink- 
stand and papyrus, indicating that the hieroglyphs were already beginning 
to assume a cursive character. 

4 Base, 746 ft.; height, 450 ft. For the Chefren these dimensions are 
690] and 447 J. Both piles must have been much larger originally. Herod- 
otus makes the Cheops 8 plethra in both length and height. It took 
100,000 men ten years simply to construct the causeway by which the 
stone for this pyramid was transported from the quarries to the Nile 
boats, 

° Or Mentouhotep [Maspero]. He was not the first prince of the 
name, nor the first to cast off the bonds of vassalage, but the first really to 
rule the entire land. Lenorm. assigns 19 centuries to the Old Kingdom, 
exclusive of the Middle. There is much propriety in separating the Middle 
from the Old. Stern, Deutsche Revue, Oct., 1882, shows that the dearth 
of records just before dynasty xi is nearly as complete as during the 
Hycsos devastation. 

^ Porticos of some of the tombs of Benihassan have columns of the 
purest Doric style, * anterior by at least two thousand years to the oldest 
columns of this order that were erected in Greece.' — Maspero. Moeris was 
an enormous lake, built by Amenemhat HI, dynasty xii, to retain and utilize 
the waters of the Nile overflow. — Herodotus, H, 49. The Labyrinth, near 
by, M'as a vast quadrangular stone palace, containing, it is said, three thou- 
sand rooms, each perfectly square, and covered with a single, massive con- 
cave slab. The rooms were so connected that once in, a stranger without 
guidance was lost. The grotto-tombs of Benihassan were the cemetery of 
the hereditary princes of Meh. It is from the scenes graven in their 
eternal stones that we learn as above of the state of the arts under dy- 
nasty xii. 

' The god Osiris was a more human form of the higher [supreme ?] god, 
Ra. See ' Egypt,' in Encyc. Brit, [consult index, s.v. * Religion '] . 

^ A tedious recital of the long and painful adventures which spirits 
were supposed to pass through in making their way to the abode of Osiris. 

^ The word means 'robber-kings.' They were probably a coast people, 
perhaps Arabs. See Stern, in Deutsche Revue, Oct., 1882. He regards 
them as having been Hamites, ' like the Edomites, Chorites and Canaan- 
ites,' and as arriving in Egypt about 2000 B.C. They were barbarians, and 
left no monuments. Hence our ignorance of them. 



the old east 39 

§ 8 The New Kingdom 

Rawlinson, Man., 68 sqq. ' Egypt,' in Encyc. Brit. De Lanoye, Ramses the Great. 

The Hycsos expelled/ national life and culture are 
speedily and splendidly restored. Gorgeous buildings 
line both Nile banks, from cataracts to sea. Art and 
industry flourish. Dynasty xviii introduces and crowns 
Egypt's golden age — at home, enlightened civil service, 
order, progress ; abroad, immense and unprecedented 
conquests. Under Tahout-mes^ HI, Egypt is arbiter 
of the world, in the language of those times, 'placing 
her frontiers where she pleases,' — sovereign from Cape 
Guardafui ^ to beyond the Euphrates, and in the ^gean 
Islands. Decline and temporary anarchy* mark the 
transition to dynasty xix, not yet, however, ending the 
golden age. Preserrtichowledge lessens the former fame 
of Ra-messou II, usually called 'the Great.' Personally 
brave, he is an unwise and tyrannical prince, under 
whom the kingdom, on the whole, declines.^ Further 
decline follows ; the high priest of Thebes usurps the 
throne ; is opposed, at last successfully, by legitimists 
from the delta, and driven to Ethiopia, where he founds 
a kingdom.^ There follows a period of alternate Ethio- 
pian and Assyrian sway, and of little, rival kings, espe- 
cially in the delta. A partial renaissance comes with 
dynasty xxvi, due mainly to Grecian immigration and 
influence, Psammeticus and Necho II being its main 
patrons."^ But disaffection on the part of the national 
party, and a vast emigration from the warrior caste, 
prepare victory for Cambyses. 

1 Native kings had been all the time in power, especially in Upper Eg., 
Dut as vassals of the Hycsos. There were no horses in Egypt till the 



40 THE OLD EAST 

Hycsos; the cat on the other hand originated in Egypt, and has spread 
thence over all the earth. Cf. Kohl, Ueber die Rolle zvelche Thiere in 
Gesch. gespielt haben, Vierteljahrsch. f. Volks%virischaft,'S,di. I; Schliebeii, 
Pferde d. Alterthums. 

2 Interesting to notice that his great power was built up for him by a 
woman, Hatasu, his elder sister. 

3 The name ' Fount ' was applied by the Egyptians to Arabia, with the 
parts of Africa about the Red Sea mouth. The word seems allied with 
« Poeni,' • Phoenicia,' and the ' Phut ' or * Put ' of the O. T. 

* Caused by the apostacy of Amon-hotpou IV from the national religion 
to a crude form of theism, which he appears to have held in a most bigoted 
temper. Lenormant believes that his change was due to Israelitish influ- 
ence, and proposes to identify his god, * Aten,' with the Hebrew ' Adonai.' 
His mother was a Semite. Both Ramessou I and II probably had Semitic 
blood in their veins, and neither was sound in the Egyptian faith. They 
worshipped Soutech, chief god of the Hycsos. When was Israel in Egypt? 
The best evidence places Joseph's promotion under Apophis, one of the 
Hycsos rulers; the persecution under Ramessou II, dynasty xix, and the 
Exodus under Menephtah II, Ramessou's fourteenth son and next suc- 
cessor, — * Egypt,' in Encyc. Brit., index, s.v. * Exodus.' That Ramessou II, 
whose mummy was unswathed and photographed in 1886, was the Pharaoh 
who put to death the Hebrews' male infants, and built Pithom with Hebrew 
slave labor, has been conclusively proved by M. Naville's recent discoveries 
at Pithom itself. See his Store City of Pithom, etc. [Lond., 1885]. 

5 Lenorm., Hist, anc, II, 286. Ramessou, or Ramses, II is the Sesos- 
tris of Herodotus. Three steles of his may still be seen cut in rock near 
Beirut. Stern puts the beginning of Ramessou's reign between 1390 and 
1380. Ramessou HI ascended the throne in 131 1, which maybe taken as 
the first absolutely fixed date in Egyptian chronology. It is fixed by 
reckoning from the conjunction of the Sirius year with the vague in 1322. 
See § 4, n. 6. 

6Cf. §ii,n. I. 

■^ This dynasty began in 648. Necho II ruled 610-594. It was he 
who caused Phoenician sailors to circumnavigate Africa, who attempted a 
canal between Nile and Red Sea, and who, in an Asiatic campaign, was ^ 
beaten by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, 605. His victor invaded Egypt, 
but soon withdrew. The Egyptians, like the Jews, disliked the sea. Hence 
the welcome extended by these kings to Greeks and Phoenicians. Priestly 
influence, enforcing passive conformity, contributed to the decline ofi 
national spirit. Cambyses' conquest was easy for much the same reason 1 
as Wolseley's in 1882. 



the old east 4i 

§ 9 Assyria and Babylon 

Duncker, Bks. II-IV. Maspero, 139, 146 sqq., 154 sqq. Sayce, Ancient Empires, ii. 
* Babylonia,' and ' Persia,' in Encyc. Brit. Razvlinson, Five Great Monarchies. 

Civilization early ^ appears in the great basin of the 
Euphrates and Tigris, its bearer being a people of mixed 
Turanian, Hamitic and Semitic stock,^ the Semitic soon 
preponderating. Aside from the Medo-Persian, there 
were here four immense empires in succession, the 
Elamite, the first Chaldean, the Assyrian, and the sec- 
ond Chaldean. Separate kings, subject to Elam, gov- 
erned in Chaldea till about 1900, when one of them, 
Saryoukin, or Sargon, conquered most of the others 
and threw off the Elamite yoke. This king furthered 
astronomy and literature, founding a library.^ Semitic 
colonists further up the Tigris founded Assur and 
Nineveh, subsequently Assyrian capitals. Babylon 
remaining the chief mistress of culture, Assyria was 
successively her vassal, peer, and suzerain. Assyria had 
a far greater reach in both space and time than either 
Chaldean empire. It became a matter of course that 
each Assyrian king should make his yearly tour of bat- 
tles. The history embraces three separate long periods 
of almost world-wide sway. During the second, coun- 
try eastward nearly to the Indus was conquered ; in the 
third, Egypt to its utmost bound. The broadest empire 
was under the greatest king, Assurbanipal.* Babylon, 
after long effort for independence with only rare and 
temporary successes,^ joins Media in overthrowing Nin- 
3veh and Assyria. The independence is splendid but 
brief. In little more than a century Babylon itself suc- 
umbs to Cyrus of Persia. 



42 THE OLD EAST 

1 2300, Elamite power. 1900, Saryoukin of Chaldea, independent. 
1800, Assyria a separate principality. 1400, Assyria independent. 1270, 
Chaldea subject to Assyria. 1020, second period of Assyrian conquest 
begins. 745, Touklat-habal-asar [Tiglath-Pilezer] II. 665, Assurbanipal : 
Assyrian empire at its apogee. 606, Nineveh falls. 538, Persians take 
Babylon. 

2 The primordial civilization here vi^as Turanian, its bearers the Acca- 
dians, occupying Babylonia to about as far south as the junction of the 
Euphrates and Tigris. Further south were the Sumirs, while northward, 
in and around Assur, which they had built, dwelt the rude Semites, who, 
mixing with the Accadians and Sumirs, produced the historic civilization 
of Assyria-Babylon. The Sumirs seem to have been Hamitic, yet spoke a 
tongue related to Accadian as dialect to parent language. It resulted 
that Assyrian speech was Semitic, Assyrian writing Turanian. On these 
very perplexing relationships see Haupt, Die Akkadische Sprache [with 
Appendix], Berlin, 1883. Many authors consider the Sumirs also to have 
been Turanians. 

3 The works were mathematical, astronomical and philological. Many 
of them, copied at a later period by order of Assurbanipal, are now in the 
British Museum. 

* Smith [G.], Hist, of Assurbanipal [Lond., 1871] is a most inter- 
esting interlinear translation of the cuneiform records. At the end are 
some valuable remarks by Bosanquet on the chronology of the times of 
this great king. Assurbanipal held sway over nearly the entire Semitic 
world. His reign was the apogee of Semitism, as that of the Egyptian 
Tahout-mes III, of Hamitism. 

^ Babylonia was partly independent from 1 100 to 800. During some of 
the time of its subjection to Assyria it was not merely in vassalage but 
actually incorporated. 

§ 10 India 

Duncker, Bks. V, VI. ' India,' in Encyc. Brit. Oldenberg, Buddha. Kaegi, Rigveda. 
Rhys Davids, ' Buddhism,' in Encyc. Brit. Himter, ' India,' z'dz'd. Collins et al., 
Buddhism and Christianity. 

Egypt was Hamitic, Assyria Semitic. Persia, of 
which, as less significant for civilization, our brief sur- 
vey forbids the canvass, was Aryan. ^ The oldest 
historic Aryan people are the Hindoos. They have 
no monuments from before Buddha, but Rigvedic^ 



I 



THE OLD EAST 43 

representations, reflecting the utmost simplicity of man- 
ners as well as scenery from the Pendjab ^ and indeed 
from Central Asia, together with the decaying aspect of 
the civilization when Alexander came, refer the rise of 
Hindoo history to a very early time. After pressing 
some distance down the Indus the people divided and 
one part crossed, conquering, to the Ganges. The west 
remained the chief home of Vedic conceptions ; in the 
east, the cradle of Buddhism, these were never rife. 
Of Indian history before Alexander note four periods : 
I Age of conquest and settlement, represented by the 
great national epics, the Mahabharata and the Rama- 
jana.^ 2 Growth-time of the caste system^ and oi 
Brahmanism in general, represented by the laws of 
Manu. Transition to this period registers an astound- 
ing departure of the people's thought and life from 
previous simplicity. The period presents an earlier, 
constructive stage, and a later, that of the Puranas^ 
marked by moral decadence, and the rise and strife of 
sects. 3 Epoch of Buddha and primitive Buddhism. 
The original Buddhistic preaching, 'human equality, 
free salvation, enter the path' — earnest, aggressive, 
pervasive — bade fair to work for the old religion total 
overthrow."^ 4 Brahman istic reaction. Rock temples^ 
at Ellora, Salsetta, Elephanta. Buddhism, stimulated 
by persecution, spread, modified, into all Eastern Asia : 
Foism in China, Lamaism in Thibet.^ 

1 1 ' Aryan ' = * the excellent.' Cf. oprjy, cipia-ros and apsr^}. 

2 The Rigveda is made up of the oldest Indian hymns. They are 
largely of a religious nature yet with secular elements. Later, complemen- 

Itary collections, similar to the Rig\'eda, were the Samaveda, the Jajurveda 
and the Atharvaveda. Nearly all the Sanscrit literature is poetry. 
I 



44 THE OLD EAST 

^ The * five-river-land ' on the upper waters of the Indus. See map of 
India. They must have arrived here from beyond the Khyber Pass so 
early as between 4000 and 3000 B.C. On the probable earliest home of 
the Aryans, § 3, n. 3. 

* The former poem relates to the conquest of the Ganges Valley, the 
latter to that of the Deccan. 

^ Hunter, as above, gives the best brief account of the origin of caste : 
into i) priests, ii) warriors and iii) serfs [Sudras]. The first were exalted 
by the sacredness of their office; the last, the original people of the land, 
were degraded by conquest. 

6 These were the writings of the various sectaries. Manu's Code was 
' the Bible of caste.' 

"^ Buddha renounced nearly every article of Brahmanical belief and de- 
manded of his disciples almost no confession of faith. His creed was : no 
personal God, no soul, no immortality for the individual consciousness, 
* mortal life a moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife,' peace to be had solely 
in total self-renunciation. He enjoined no sacrifices for sin, composed no 
prayers and made no provision for religious services except meetings for 
confession of faults. Buddhism ' has gained more disciples than any other 
creed in the world, and, after a lapse of 24 centuries, is now professed by 
500 millions of people, or more than one-third of the human race.' — Hun- 
ter. On the Buddhist's goal : ' If any teach Nirvana is to cease, say unto 
such they lie. If any teach Nirvana is to live, say unto such they err, 
not knowing this.' Light of Asia. 

8 It was the Buddhist pagodas, so popular, that first led the Brahmans 
to rear these temples. Previously they had no religious structures. 

^ See ' Lamaism ' and * China,' in Encyc. Brit. 



§ II Government 

Ra'wli7iso» , Man., 22 sqq. Aristotle, Politics, V. 

In Asia as in Egypt the earliest historical civil govern- 
ment is despotic monarchy. As yet, no dream of consti- 
tutional rule.i To the last in India, at first everywhere, 
kingdoms are small and separate.^ The colossal empires 
of West Asia are late, evoked partly by the need of 
opposing Egypt. In these — prime cause of their insta- 



THE OLD EAST 45 

bility — so lacking is Antiquity in all thought of human 
unity ^ that no effort is had to unify subject nationali- 
ties. Tribute promptly paid, conquered peoples are left 
entirely to themselves. Even under the satrap system 
of Darius Hystaspes, each province is quite free to 
retain its own speech, religion, laws, customs.* This 
policy had advantages. It brought formal, furthered 
real, centralization. On the other hand, it promoted 
disloyalty through the dangerous scope it offered to the 
greed of satraps. Co-ordinate nations too lacked mutual 
regard. Each viewed itself as divine in origin, others 
as barbarians, to be plundered, enslaved or put to the 
sword, as it might list.^ In international spirit and 
ideas toward constitutional government Phoenicia took 
the lead.^ The noble brotherly love of Buddhism little 
affected politics.'' 

1 The Ethiopian kingdom mentioned in § 8 was elective, but such a 
monarchy was doubtless as little constitutional as the likewise elective one 
of early Rome. 

2 Phoenicia is rather a geographical than a political name. Its cities 
were each a state. Lenormant understands that Egypt regarded Israel its 
vassal even during David's and Solomon's reign. 

3 Remarkable, however, is the treaty of alliance, commerce, and extra- 
dition, which Ramessou II struck with the Kheta [Hittite] king: ^ If an 
enemy march against the lands of the gj' eat king of Egypt and he shall send 
word to the great prince of Kheta, Come, bring me forces against them, the 
great prince of Kheta shall do so : the great prince of Kheta shall destroy 
those ene7nies. If the great prince of Kheta prefer not to come in person 
he shall send archers and war-chariots to destroy them.^ Then follows a 
clause promising in like manner Egypt's aid, in case of need, to the Kheta. 
Extradition of criminals is to prevail, also of all other fugitives, though 
mere self-expatriation is not to be treated as a crime. — Maspero, 223. This 
is the world's most ancient diplomatic document, and one of the most 
precious historical sources which all antiquity has left us. Its text stands 
chiselled in the Karnak stones. 



46 THE OLD EAST 

'^ Rawlinson, Man., 90 sq. 

5 In early Latin a single word {hostis) denoted both * stranger ' and 
' enemy.' The Greeks called all foreigners ' barbarians.' The Egyptians 
applied ' stupid ' in the same way. ' Aryans ' looked upon themselves as 
* the excellent.' The Chinese dubbed their empire ' central ' and * celes- 
tial.' Israel viewed itself as the elect of God. The very word ' slave,' 
which acquired its modern meaning from the large numbers of the Slavic 
race reduced to slavery, originally meant ' glorious.' 

^ Carthage was an aristocracy, and guarded in the most sedulous man- 
ner against a dangerous degree of individual power. It brought this spirit 
from Phoenicia, yet it seems that the little confederated city-states here 
allowed some political power to popular assemblies. Perhaps the geru- 
siasts at Carthage too v.^ere popularly elected. — Mommsen, Rome, II, 23 
sqq. The immediate Phoenician colonies were free, but not those of Car- 
thage. — Ranke, IVelfgesch, Th. I, xii. 

■^ Max Mliller, Buddhist Charity, No. Am. Rev., Vol. 140. 

§ 12 Intelligence 

Kaegi, Rigveda. Lenorinant, II, ii, §§ 2, 3; iii, §§ 3, 5. Max M'uUer, Introd. to 
Sacred Books of the East. ' Records of the Past.' 

The intensive intelligence of Antiquity we shall 
scarcely overestimate. Deep philosophy nearly every- 
where underlies the popular religion.^ Literature 
abounds, in India early, in Egypt very early. But for 
the frailty of the tablets bearing it, Assyrian could 
hardly be less voluminous. Under the xiith Egyptian 
dynasty literature is a profession by itself.^ Many 
pieces out of these primeval letters betray keen reflec- 
tion.^ The proverbs of Papyrus ' Prisse ' recall Solo- 
mon's.* Certain Vedic hymns and chapters from the 
Egyptian classics are worthy of any age.^ Egyptians 
and Chaldeans both made careful astronomical obser- 
vations, which are still of value." The great pyramids 
exactly face the points of compass. The same mathe- 
matical precision marks the arrangement of Assyrian 



THE OLD EAST 4/ 

temples. From Assyria has come the oldest hum.an 
institution, the week, with its days, hours and min- 
utes.^ Chaldean knowledge of square numbers," frac- 
tional as well as integral, seems to be older than Nine- 
veh. Chaldean priests understood the precession of the 
equinoxes and reckoned it with great, though not abso- 
lute, precision. They acquainted India with grammar 
and the zodiac, its signs, minutes and seconds ; India 
them with algebra and the decimal notation. Nearly 
all the fine as well as the mechanic arts proceeded from 
these ancient men, and in some of them they produced 
effects never equalled since. China discovered gun- 
powder, the compass,^ and a kind of printing ; India, 
steel-making ; Babylon, enamelling and encaustic paint- 
ing. Extensively^ intelligence so early was incompa- 
rably inferior to modern, yet it was considerably diffused. 

1 See § i6. 

2 See § 15, n. I. Doubtless many Assyrian records have perished with 
the artificial stone on which they were written. 

^ ' A good man is not envious, but well disposed to another even while 
ill-treated by him; like the sandal-tree, which, even when felling, imparts 
to the axe its aroma.' — Hindoo poem. * Let not sin after sin, hard to con- 
quer, overcome us. Let sin and lust depart.' — Rigveda. ' The rebellious 
sees knowledge in ignorance, virtues in vices; what sages know to be death, 
that to him is life day by day.' Papyrus Prisse. 

* * Good luck makes every place good; a little check may suffice to cast 
^ down a very great man. Felicitous speech excels for lustre the emerald 
I that slaves' hands find among pebbles. The wise man receives satisfaction 
I from what he knows; his heart is in the right place, pleasant are his lips.* 
i Papyrus Prisse, oldest part. Cf. last n.; Lenorm., Hist, anc.^ II, ii, 2 and 3; 
I Mahaffy, Prolegomena, Pt. ii. 

^ For point, sense or even beauty, nothing yet translated from the 
Vedas can compare with our best pieces from Old Eg}-pt. 

^ Sixty was a favorite factor and divisor with these priests, for the rea- 
son, Max Muller thinks, that it is the greatest multiple-number. How 



48 



THE OLD EAST 



permanent ! * The French Revolution destroyed all else but the dials of 
our watches.' 

"^ Here is a copy, in Arabic figures, of a table which Loftus found at 
Senkereh in 1854: — 



SQUARES. 


' SOSSES. 




UNITS. 


SQUARES. 


' SOSSES. 




UNITS. 


512 = 


= 43 


+ 


21 


562 . 


= 52 


+ 


16 


522 . 


= 45 


+ 


4 


57' - 


= 54 


+ 


9 


53-^ -- 


= 46 


+ 


49 


582 = 


= 56 


+ 


4 


54'^ = 


= 48 


+ 


36 


59^ = 


- 58 


+ 


I 


55^ = 


= 50 


+ 


25 


6o2 . 


= 60 







A * soss ' was 60 units. The table reads : the square of 5 1 is equal to 
43 * sosses ' [43 times 60] plus 21 units, etc. 'Quite similar tables exist 
upon the times for the rising of Venus, Jupiter and Mars, as well as cal- 
endars of the phases of the moon from day to day for the entire month. 
They had determined the moon's mean daily course, and succeeded, by 
knowledge of a continuous series of 223 of its changes, in predicting its 
eclipses. The earliest which we know to have been computed by them is 
that of March 30, 721 B.C., and their reckoning varies but a few minutes 
from ours. Sun-eclipses they did not predict but most carefully observed, 
e.g., those of July 2, 930, and July 13, 809, B.C.' — Miirdter, Gesr^. Baby- 
loniens u. Assyriens. They knew and reduced to practice one of the chief 
elements of the metric system, — that of deriving all measures of length, 
superficies, solids and weight to one and the same linear unit. Mommsen, 
Rome, I, 273, is of opinion that the Babylonian blending of the duodeci- 
mal and the decimal notation arose from notice of solar along Math lunar 
months. Ten solar cycles would nearly equal twelve lunar. Geometry of 
a primitive kind was familiar to the Egyptians. Also see § 4, n. 6. 

^ See Humboldt, Cosmos, Vol. II, for the main facts in the h. of the 
compass. The oldest bridge of which there is record spanned the Euphra- 
tes at Babylon. The Egyptians were great in anatomy and medicine. 



ill 



the old east 49 

§ 13 Writing 

Maspero, ch. xv. Tylor, Anthrop, ch. vli. 'Hieroglyphics' in Encyc. Brit. Carl 
Abel, Linguistic Essays, ix and x. Isaac Taylor, The Alphabet. Mahaffy, Proleg., 
103 sqq. 

Writing everywhere began with pictures.^ Its stages 
were, (i) ideography direct, (2) ideography^ symbolic, 
(3) phonography syllabic, (4) phonography alphabetic, 
alphabetic writing as we have it now. Ideographic 
symbols are either simple or complex. The simple 
may be formed through synecdoche, metonymy, meta- 
phor or enigma. Complex are combinations of simple. 
Ideography was a very inadequate means of expressing 
thought. Syllabic phonography arose through associat- 
ing the ideogram with the sound, or congeries of sounds, 
constituting the name of its object.^ Ideographic values 
of characters passed into sound-values. With monosyl- 
labic languages this ended the process, but some polysyl- 
labic ones found means to represent each several syllable 
by itself. This was effected by attaching the character 
for a whole word to its first syllable alone. The Assy- 
rian cuneiform script represents this syllabic stage. The 
next step consisted in decomposing syllables and find- 
ing signs for each vowel and consonant. The Egyptian 
writing — hieroglyphic, hieratic, or demotic, according as 
it was less or more cursive and abridged — employed 
together ideograms, and both syllabic and alphabetic 
phonograms. The Phoenicians perfected rather than 
invented alphabetic writing, as their alphabet was de- 
rived from the cursive Egyptian.* From the Phoenician 
have sprung all the other alphabets in the world.^ 

1 True of the German runes, which at first were not letters at all. 

2 Ideography direct would be illustrated by writing the picture of an 



50 THE OLD EAST 

ox for the idea of ox; id. symbolic by using the same picture, or the 
picture of an elephant, to denote strenglh. This would also illustrate the 
nietonymic formation of simple symbols, as would also any picturing of 
cause for effect : the sun or a lamp, for light, etc. Synecdoche presents a 
part for the whole, as the head for the entire animal. Metaphor is used 
when the figure of an eagle is sketched to denote royalty. Ejtigma is the 
same as metaphor, save that the resemblance, instead of being natural, 
subsists only in and through some mystic Egyptian belief. 

^ In phonography the mind leaves out of account the thing represented 
by the sign, passing directly, through association, from sign to sound, a 
process which rebus poorly imitates. So far the Egyptians had gone. The 
Phoenicians went further, and [e.g.] instead of sketching a donkey or 
donkey's head or ear to spell * donkey,' used some one of these signs to 
spell ' don,' and [we will say] the picture of a key for the other syllable, 
'key.' Alphabetic writing was reached when the first sign had become 
still further specialized so as to signify only ' d,' other signs being used for 
* o ' and the remaining letters. Cuneiform writing would seem to have 
been an invention hardly less wonderful, so early, than alphabetic. See 
Schrader, Keilinschriften u. d. Alte Testament, in which Professor Haupt 
has an excursus on the cuneiform story of the deluge. 

4 Probably through the Hycsos. See § 7, n. 9. The Semites did not 
introduce vowels. This was done independently of one another by the 
Greeks and the Hindoos. ' In every letter we trace lies the mummy of an 
Egyptian hieroglyphic' 

^ On derivation of the alphabets of India from Babylon, Burnell, in 
Academy, June 17, 1882. Writing from right to left, as in Hebrew, is not 
the oldest fashion. The Papyrus Prisse reads as English, which seems to 
have been the earliest, yielding here and there to the ' boustrophedon ' 
form, from right to left and then back, as in ploughing, the left-handed 
being a remnant of this. 

§ 14 Art 

Perrot and Ckiptez, Ancient Art. Winckelmann, do. Rawlmson, Man., 27 sqq. 
Rassain, Babylonian Cities. Mitchell, Anc. Sculpture, i-viii. 

Ancient art had four independent centres ^ of origi- 
nation, Egypt, Chaldea, India, and China. Chinese 
art is ancient but unimportant. Hindoo, consisting 
of architecture only, arose later and was remarkable 



THE OLD EAST 5 I 

merely for the bizarre and gigantic character of its 
products.^ Egyptian art, existing only to serve religion, 
not for its own sake, could not attain modern measures 
of perfection. Here, as in all the most ancient seats of 
art, painting and sculpture were subordinate to archi- 
tecture. Mechanical details had been thoroughly mas- 
tered, as appears from the number and the good preser- 
vation of remains. Colors are bright and pillars solid 
after fifty centuries. There were two periods, a realistic, 
and a later one in which art wrought with canons and 
models of its own.^ The thoughts of immensity and 
repose rule in both. Chaldean art is more practical.* 
As to architecture, note the materials,^ the terrace, the 
story-tower. The Assyrians prosecuted painting but 
little,^ and chiefly to aid the relief of statues. In 
encaustic painting the Babylonians greatly excelled. 
In sculpture alone did Assyria surpass Babylon. The 
Assyrian sculptors were realists, 'the Dutchmen of 
antiquity.' In reproducing inanimate forms they have 
never been outdone, in that of animal, hardly equalled. 
In perspective they failed, unwilling to sacrifice any 
one projection to another. To the genius of Assyrian 
engravers in stone we are indebted for the preservation 
of the people's literature. The Persians, like the Jews 
and Phoenicians, copied Assyrian sculpture, as they did 
Assyrian writing. Persian architecture imitated the 
Hindoo more. 

^ On the derivation of classical art from the East, see § 19. 

2 But wood-carving early attained excellence in both China and India. 
The Hindoos, one has said, had no genius but patience. Equally true of 
the Chinese. 

3 The naturalistic period was under the Old Kingdom, the independent 



52 THE OLD EAST 

development under the New. In this, extraordinary skill was attained in 
subordinating the natural in animal forms to the ideal. The lions from 
Gebel Barkal in the British Museum are thought to be the finest extant 
examples of the idealization of animal forms. 

* The greatest structures in the Euphrates Valley were for defence, like 
city walls of colossal height and width, or for aid in observing the heavens, 
as the terraces and those towers with several stories each. Alexander 
found at Babylon a Belus-temple, eight stories high. The oldest Eg}^ptian 
writing is a tribute of homage to the immortal soul; one of the oldest 
cuneiform documents is a business contract. Walls of Assyrian buildings 
were thick but hollow, serving economy and guarding admirably against 
extremes of heat and cold. 

^ Brick or artificial stone, sun-dried or burned. From Nineveh south- 
ward the land contained no natural stone. The Babylonian bricks were 
far superior to the Assyrian. Each brick had on its under side as laid 
in the wall a legend, which, in public buildings, contained the name of 
the king reigning at the time of construction. If all the bricks in a dis- 
covered wall bear the same legend, the wall is known to be original, not 
made of bricks from an earlier time. Some pillars and roofs were of wood, 
but the Mesopotamians knew and used the principles of vaulting and 
arching. Wooden pillars were occasionally gilded or silvered. Assyrian 
art-development was at its finest in the 7th century B.C., under Sargon, 
Sennacherib and Sardanapalus VI. 

^ Painting is the department of antique art of which our knowledge is 
most defective. 

§ 15 Industrial Condition 

Huet, Commerce et Navigation des anciens, i-xv. Rawli'nson, Man., 29 sqq., 80 sqq. 
Grote, II, xix. Osgood, Prehistoric Commerce, Baptist Quar. Rev., 1885. 

By B.C. 1000 in all the great centres of civilization, 
in Egypt ^ far earlier, society was thoroughly organized 
industrially. Wealth and luxury abounded. Division 
of labor prevailed. Agriculture and the industrial arts 
were everywhere extremely well advanced. Egypt and 
Babylonia contained each an elaborate system of canals 
for irri^ration. Weavinsf, iron-workinsf and most other 
ordinary forms of skilled labor were carried on in all 



THE OLD EAST 53 

civilized lands. ^ Commerce thrived. Babylon was a 
city of merchants.^ Phoenician sails whitened the Per- 
sian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and even 
the Atlantic coasts of Africa and Europe.* Tin from 
Cornwall and the Scilly Isles was exchanged for the 
gold of Ophir and the silks of India. Immense cara- 
vans for inland commerce connected the Mediterranean 
with the Euphrates and Tigris, and these with the 
Indus ^ and with China. Yet in spite of this enormous 
productive activity, the bulk of the population, immense 
in each land, was in deep poverty, caused partly by 
tyranny, partly by ignorance and disregard of economic 
laws. Eminent evils economically were (i) slavery, 
(2) caste, (3) the idleness and prodigality of the upper 
classes, (4) wars, gigantic, perpetual, truceless, annihi- 
lating capital as well as men. 

1 See Lenorm., II, 123 sqq., also Maspero, 123, for the document from 
the time of dynasty xii, wherein a scribe, urging his son to take up the same 
calling, enumerates the infelicities attaching to each of the several trades. 

'^ See § 12. It is believed that the Egyptian linen-manufacture has 
for quality never been surpassed. 

^ Curious and useful animals were imported thither from the remotest 
lands. Both silver and gold were used as money, at the value-relation of 
13 or 13' 5 to I. The Chaldean account of the flood calls the ark a ship 
and gives it a pilot. 

* So far as known only Phoenician or Carthaginian ships visited the 
Scilly Islands, but the Greeks of Marseilles obtained tin thence overland. 
The Phoenicians had founded Gades [modern Cadiz] before the dawn of 
Greek history. The plants for the incense so common in Egypt must have 
come from as far at least as the mouth of the Red Sea. Also the cassia, 
cinnamon and sweet calamus required for the holy anointing oil of the 
Mosaic law [Exodus xxx] were not obtainable nearer than Ceylon or India. 
— Osgood. 

^ Either northward, by the Khyber Pass, or southward, by the Bolan. 
The route to China left Northern Persia. All along this, and westward, 



54 THE OLD EAST 

south of the Caspian and Black Seas even to the extreme west of Europe 
have been found antique specimens of jade, which must have come in 
prehistoric times from China or Burma, where are the only known mines 
of this stone in the world. — Osgood. The Old Persians were the first to 
use a postal or a telegraph [by signs] system. They also had topographi- 
cal maps and magnificent roads, with sign-posts and wayside inns. 

§ i6 Religion 

Mom'er Wzllmms, Relig. of Zoroaster, Nineteenth Century, Vol. IX. Hoare, Relig. of 
Anc. Egyptians, ibid., Vol. IV. ' Religions,' in Encyc. Brit, [names the best litera- 
ture]. Raiulinson, Religions of the Ancient World. Caird, Faiths of the World. 
Rhys Davids, Origin and Development of Religious Belief. Keary, Primitive Belief. 

Asia is the land of religion, as Europe of politics. 
All antiquity save China was priest-ridden. Learning 
was a purely priestly affair. Nearly every ancient 
religion was a popular polytheism with an underlying 
monism,^ either theistic or atheistic. Thoughtful per- 
sons conceived sun, animal or idol, as a mere symbol or 
manifestation of Deity, the ignorant as Deity itself. 
The most common such symbol was the sun,^ and 
worship of the sun, or of light, was almost universal. 
Coupled with the sun-god was usually some deification 
of the renewing, generating, fructifying principle in 
nature. The world was expounded more as an emana- 
tion than as a creation proper.^ The tendency was to 
separate religion from morality. Zoroastrianism, often 
considered a dualistic system, was in fact the best 
heathen specimen of theistic monism,* as Buddhism was 
of atheistic. Zoroaster, thinking of God as Light, is 
naturally an optimist ; Buddha, judging the First Cause 
to be unknowable and dark, cannot but champion pessi- 
mism.^ Confucianism, more ethical than theological, 
declares for neither of these views ; the Egyptian reli- 
gion in different species of its utterances, for both.^ 



THE OLD EAST 55 

1 Monism is any doctrine which derives the world ultimately from some 
single principle. 

2 See ' Religions ' in Encyc. Brit. 

3 I.e., a creation out of nothing. Note the difference between the idea 
of emanation, lower forms of being ever proceeding from higher, and the 
modern notion of evolution, according to which higher forms issue from 
lower. 

* The evil principle was not conceived as coeternal with the good. 

5 Ultimate being, the causa sui and the first cause of all other being, 
must inevitably furnish the standard for judging the worth of all finite 
existences. If spirit, consciousness, personality, is regarded as first cause, 
then life, the increase of our powers, our development in reason, will 
seem good and desirable. If on the contrary the central essence of the 
universe is unconscious, thought-life and the growth of personality in gen- 
eral cannot but appear evil and deplorable. 

6 Monotheism and belief in immortality were basal elements in the 
Egyptian faith, both clearly visible already in the ' Prisse ' ; but the Egyptian 
animal-cult and deep regard for the human body most naturally connect 
themselves with the East-Asiatic view that normal being is the reverse of 
spiritual. Cats, dogs, cows, crocodiles and other animals were worshipped. 
Herodotus declares that at a fire the Egyptians were more anxious to save 
the cats than to quench the flames. He takes [II, 123] belief in immor- 
tality and in transmigration to have originated in Egypt. 

§ 17 The Mosaic Faith 

Isaiah, ch. xli, xliv. Psalvt cxv. Jeremiah, x. Old Testament, passim. 
Lotze, Mik., VII, v. 

A With all contemporary religions, that of Israel stood 
in marvellous contrast, — spiritual, yet exoteric and pop- 
ular. Here, by the eighth century b.c, common people 
are emphatic monotheists, and their faith tolerates no 
pantheistic or polytheistic phasis.^J Theirs is one God 
at surface as at basis, a spirit, free from subdivision, 
sex, or confusion with his universe. Idols cannot help 
men conceive him. Nature is his work, through crea- 
tion, not emanation ; its laws, forms of his eternal voli- 



56 THE OLD EAST 

tion. The thunder is his voice, the sunshine his smile, 
the hail-storm the stroke of his awful rod ; but these 
never assume independent potency. Jehovah has no 
second, has no equal. He is personal, moral, knowable. 
' Clouds and darkness ' are ' round about him,* but * he 
clothes himself with light,' and 'justice and judgment 
are the habitation of his throne.' Thus the religion is 
ethical and optimistic, and contains the germ of a rational 
doctrine of immortality. ^ 

1 That the oldest parts of the Old Testament contain forms of expres- 
sion indicative of the lingering influence of nature-religion, even increases 
our wonder at the perfect monotheism of the prophets. Cf. Duhm, 7'heo- 
logie der Propheten. 

^ All this in the way indicated at last §, n. 5. 

§ 18 Morality 

Hegel, Philos. of Hist., 117 sqq., 154 sqq. Flint, do., in France and Germany, Int. 
Lenormant, praef. to Hist. anc. 

I A generic, vital defect in ancient morality was its 
external, mechanical character. Instead of being cog- 
nized and obeyed as rational, moral law was viewed as be- 
ing merely imposed upon the agent by foreign authority.^ 
Herein Buddhism is no exception, the ' peace ' it pro- 
claimed having nowise the character of moral rightness.^ 
2 Another lack was non-recognition of mankind's unity .^ 
Hence, {a) caste : in India an iron system, in Egypt less 
rigid, elsewhere only incipient, {b) terrible cruelty in 
war and toward slaves and prisoners. In this the 
Assyrians were the worst. On the contrary, early 
Buddhism, to which all praise, antagonized this entire 
spirit of caste and separatencss. 3 Non-belief in human 
unity forbade the thought of human progress, which was 



THE OLD EAST 5/ 

also, like optimism at large, hindered by dimness in the 
conception of divine unity.^ Man perfectible, history 
purposive, humanity a single thing including all epochs, 
races, and classes, — such ideas were wholly unknown 
to paganism, and are due almost solely to the gospel. 
4 Antiquity failed to regard the human individual as of 
independent worth. Plence polygamy, low estimate of 
woman, infanticide, prodigious slaughter in wars and 
the oppression and passivity of the multitude. In the 
old Orient, literature has no word of freedom, life little 
moral heroism or struggle. 

1 Lotze, Mik., VII, v. Max Miiller, Contemp. Rev., November, 1882, 
defends the Hindoos as truthful, much as has been alleged to the contrary. 

2 See C. H. Ball, Unitarian Rev., 1882. 

^ Lotze, Mik.^ VII, iv. The thought of two radically different kinds of 
men, (pvxiKoi and Trvev/jLaTiKol, which figures so largely in Gnostic and even 
Christian Alexandrian writings, seems to have been the residuum of Egyp- 
tian caste-sentiment. 

* So far as belief in a single Supreme Being was wanting, unity would 
not be assigned to the world or to mankind; and belief in progress for the 
genus could not possibly arise while the universe was thought of as mani- 
fold, or men as constituting various kinds. 

§ 19 Contribution to the West 

Groie, Pt. II, ii, III, xxi. Curthis, I, ii. Zeller, Greek Philos., Int., ch. ii. K. F. 
Herrmann, Ktdturgesch. d. Griechen tc. Romer, 39 sqq. Milchhofer, An/ange 
d. Kunst in Griechetiland. Max Miiller, Contemp. Rev., Oct., 1882. 

It is obvious that the East must have been to a great 
extent the instructor of Greece and Rome.^ Such in- 
fluence would naturally be in the main impalpable, leav- 
ing no registry in specific institutions. Yet much that 
is specific can be traced, especially at two periods, the 
beginning and the close of Greek life. Old Attic reli- 
gion and social structure show Egyptian traits. The 



58 THE OLD EAST 

Grecian calendar was of Egyptian origin. Pythagoras, 
Tliales, Solon, Democritus and Plato learned of Egyp- 
tian priests.2 The earliest Greek coins were Lydian,^ 
weights and measures Babylonian. The Greeks became 
acquainted with navigation, also with several of their 
deities, from the Phoenicians.^ Still another source of 
their religion was Phrygia, whose language too, greatly 
resembled Greek. The alphabets of the Greeks and of 
the Italian peoples originated in the Phoenician, their 
art in the Assyrian. 'The Assyrian influence spread 
throughout Asia Minor, the Mediterranean Isles and 
Greece. The first Greek sculpture received its inspira- 
tion, precepts and models from the Assyrian school. 
Through colonists and commerce the same tradition 
passed from Asia Minor, Phoenicia and Carthage into 
Italy, where it served as basis for the development of 
the Etruscan civilization, which furnished to that of 
Rome the elements of its primitive grandeur.'^ As to 
the second of the periods named, all later Greek phil- 
osophy had a distinct oriental cast.^ New-Platonism 
originated in Alexandria, under Asiatic influence, and 
was more than a century old before it flourished at 
Athens. 

1 This in no sense compromises Greek originality. * It is no less a fact of 
history that the Greeks derived conceptions from India, Syria and Egypt 
than that the Greek conceptions are peculiar to themselves and those others 
alien.' — Hegel. The greatest mere classical historians slight the East, 
needing to be corrected by Duncker and Lenormant. At this point Grote 
can learn from Thirlwall. Thiersch, Epochen d. bildenden Kunst unter den 
Griechen, i8i6 sqq., argued strongest for Egyptian and Phoenician inf. on 
early Greek art; K. O. Mliller, Handb. d. Archneologie, strongest against. 
The text might also mention the historical, geographical, ethnological and 
other knowledge vv'hich came to Greece in conseq. of Alexander's cam- 
paigns, and so enriches Aristotle's writings. 



THE OLD EAST 59 

^ Democritus and Plato probably visited Egypt; perhaps Pythagoras 
too, but this is more doubtful. Plato learned much there, but his myths 
rather than his philosophy. Curtius agrees with Grote in somewhat mini- 
mizing Egyptian influence in Greece, neither one basing aught upon the 
traditions touching Cecrops and Danaus, or upon the statements of Herod- 
otus II, identifying Demeter with Isis, and so on. Little as we can im- 
plicitly trust Herodotus when off the track of his personal explorations, 
the advance of Egyptology renders most of his representations in this 
matter increasingly credible. Cf. § 3. For latest criticism of Herodotus, 
Sayce, pref. to Anc't Empires of East. There was virtual caste in early 
Athens. — Rawlinson, Man., 120. Athena and Neith were perhaps the 
same. Notice that Eastern Greece had the earliest and always the richest 
civilization. 

^ Lydia and Persia alone among nations west of the Indus coined 
money in high antiquity. They applied Babylonian monetary ideas. In 
the talent of 60 minae and the mina of 60 shekels we see the Babylonian 
sexagesimal principle. The shekel was, in Greek, the stater or the Daric. 
The word ' mna ' is of Chaldean origin. Through Pheidon of Argos, who 
introduced weights and measures in Greece and was the first Greek to coin 
money, this Asiatic norm of weights and measures passed to Greece, known 
there as the Eginetan, because the earliest Greek coins were struck in 
Egina. The Euboean system, prevalent in Athens and the Ionian cities, 
was made up in the same way as the Eginetan. Both were in use in 
the Persian Empire, as well as in Greece. Eginetan measures were to 
Euboean or old Attic as 6 to 5, to Solon's or later Attic as 5 to 3. — 
Boeckh, Metrologische Unterstichungen. Pheidon usurped the presidency 
of the Olympian games in the 28th Olympiad, not in the 8th, as Pausanias, 
VI, 22, 2, has till recently been read. He must have flourished about 
700-660 B.C. 

* Aphrodite, Artemis, Poseidon, also Heracles. Melcart, god of Tyre, 
is Melicertes [Palaemon], deified on the Corinthian Isthmus. He was son 
of Ino, daughter of Cadmus, the bringer of letters to Greece. 

^ Lenormant. Cf. Grote III, xix; Mommsen, I, xv. Thus are to be 
explained those monuments and that luxury and wealth of the Etruscan 
cities which so long whetted the fierce greed of the Romans. The very 
name ' Italy ' is probably Phoenician, as is * Salamis,' founded by Phoe- 
nicians. The Romans learned arching and vaulting from the Etruscans, 
who probably derived them from Egypt through Phoenicia and Carthage. 
Mommsen, however, traces them from Italy to Greece. It is generally 
conceded that Grecian art owed little to Egypt directly, but much more to 
Assyria. 



60 THE OLD EAST 

^ Helping that tendency to mysticism and mythologizing which Grote 
says, III, xxi, ruined so many speculative minds among the Greeks. Mys- 
ticism and theosophy were main traits of New-Platonism. The same east- 
ern influence appeared in the Mithras-worship, which pervaded the Roman 
empire. It was known even in Britain, carried thither by Roman soldiers. 



1 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER III 

i Greece: Grote, H. of Greece,** 4th ed. [best] 10 vols., 1872. Cur- 
tius, do.,* 5 vols. Duncker, H. of Greece,** 4 vols. [Abbott's tr.]. 
Zeller, Philos. of the Greeks. Ranke, Univ. H., I. Cox, H. of Greece 
[to consist of 4 vols.]. Felton, Greece Anc. and Mod. Hertzberg [in 
Oncken], Hellas u. Rofti. Mitford and Thirlwall, still good on many 
topics, ii Rome: Mommsen, H. of Rome** [including Bk. VIII]. 
Merivale, H. of the Romans under the Emp.** [to Marc Aurelius]. 
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Rom. Emp.** [These three standard 
works cover, in the order given, the entire reach of Roman hist.] Ranke, 
Weltgesch* Theile II, III, IV. Duruy, H.of Rome ** [16 vols., — costly, 
yet invaluable as a presentation of Roman civilization and life]. Curteis, 
Rom. Emp. from Theodosius to Charles Great. [Student's Series contains, 
in single vols., Merivale's Gen. H. of Rome, Liddell's Rome, and Gib- 
bon.] Sismondi, Hist, de la chute de V empire romain,^ 2 vols. Thierry 
[Amedee], Tableau de Pempire rof?tain.** Schiller, Gesch. d. r'dm. 
Kaiserzeit [II is to d. of Diocletian]. Nitzsch, Gesch. d. r'dm. Republik. 
Peter, Romische Gesch., 3 Bde. Cutts, Constantine the Great. Burck- 
hardt. Times of do.* Gregorovius, der Kaiser Hadrian. Arnold, 
Rom. Provincial Administration to Constantine. Niebuhr, H. of Rome, 
also his Lectures on do. to Fall of West. Emp. Madvig, Verfasstttig u. 
Verwaltung d. r'dm. Staates* 2 Bde. Marquardt-Mommsen, R'omische 
Alterthilmer.** Lange, do. "^'iWems, Droit ptiblic ro>?iain.* iii Chris- 
tianity : Schaff, H. of the Christ. Ch.; * Creeds of Ch't'ndom. Neander, 
H. of Christ. Relig. and Ch., I, II; Planting and Training of the Christ. Ch. 
Merivale, Conversion of the Rom. Emp.** Hase, H. of the Christ. Ch.** 
Mosheim, Commentaries on the H. of Ch'ty dg. First 325 Yrs.** Mil- 
man, H. of Latin Ch'ty.** Lea, Studies in Ch. FI.* Dale, Synod of 
Elvira, etc. Smith, The Ch. in Roman Gaul. Northcote, Roman Cata- 
combs. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism. De Broglie, Heglise et Pempire 
remain au iv siecle [from catholic point of view], 6 vols. Rothe, An- 
fdnge d. christlichen Kirche. Pressens6, Early Years of Ch'ty, 4 vols. 
Hatch, Organization of the Early Christ. Churches.* Hefele, H. of Coun- 
cils** [2d. ed. of original, 1873 sqq., 7 vols.]. 'Primers of Christian 
Literature' [ed. by Prof. Fisher]. Allen, Early Ch'ty. Lecky, H. of 
European Morals, I. [The latest and ablest Ch. Histories are Gieseler's 
Lehrbuch, Brieger and Harnack's ed., Kurtz, 9th ed., 3 vols., and Hase's 
Lectures, 3 vols.] iv General: Freeman, Hist'l Geog., chaps, ii, iii;, 
Chief Periods of European H.** Lotze, Mikrokosmus,** Bk. VII. v. 
Bosworth-Smith, Carthage and the Carthaginians. Convenient vols, 
have appeared in the Epochs of Anc. H. Ser., also in the Story of the 
Nations Ser, 



CHAPTER III 

THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 



§ I Character of Classical Culture 

Lotze, Mikrokosmzes, VII, v. 

The civilization sketched in the preceding Chapter 
seemed fated not to pass a certain grade of develop- 
ment. For this and other reasons its influence upon 
modern times, however real, has been, save that of the 
Jewish religion, indirect and inappreciable. The cul- 
ture of Greece and Rome, on the other hand, had supreme 
genius for growth and movement, foreordaining it to en- 
dure and to rule the future. Through these immortal 
peoples civilization reached a totally new character : a 
loftier level, a richer diversity. In particular. Art, Phi- 
losophy, Administration, Law and Religion assumed 
during the classical period, forms which almost promised 
to be final. As cooperating to give character to this 
new order of ages we may distinguish four groups of 
elements : Oriental,^ Grecian, Roman, Christian. Bar- 
ring the German, these are the sole storehouses out of 
which the modern thought-world has received its stock. 

1 For the debt of the classical age to the Orient, see Ch. II, § 19. 



64 the classical period 

§ 2 Greece : Exaltation of Mind 

Freeman, Chief Periods, 9 sq. Hegel, Philos. of Hist., Ft. II. Schlegel, do., ch. viii. 
Ranke, Weltgesch., Theil I, vii. Zeller, Greek Philos., Int. 

The leading characteristics of the Greeks, their chief 
glory, lending a wholly matchless excellence to their 
history and literature as culture-studies, were fearless 
inquisitiveness and intense devotion to ideals. To them 
thought was greater than things. Here at length ulti- 
mate being no less than visible nature is regarded know- 
able. If the world is viewed as constituting an objective 
and steadfast order, thinking is not awed and dismayed by 
it as in Asia. Brutes no longer receive worship, either as 
deities or as symbols of them. The ancient Pelasgi, so 
early, like the Germans and Persians, adored the su- 
preme God without images or temples. In Greece, in- 
dividuality,^ moral life and struggle rise into prominence : 
great statesmen, orators, generals, fine, strong, personal 
characters, tower above the multitude. No other na- 
tional career has ever been so brief and brilliant at once. 
* Absolute despotism, human sacrifices, polygamy, de- 
liberate mutilation of the person as a punishment, and 
the selling of children into slavery, existed in some part 
or other of the barbarian world, but are not found in 
any city of Greece in historical times.' To this noble 
race belonged the first examples in history, of states at 
the same time civilized and free.^ Greece prized the 
individual man, exalting him duly as against nature, if 
not yet enough as against the state. 

1 The Greeks like the Germans tended to individuahsm, the Romans to 
union. It was their individuahstic spirit, become unduly developed, which 
made Greece the prey, first of Macedon, then of Rome. Mommsen, Rome, 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 6$ 

1, ch. ii, at end, instructively discusses the differences between the Greek 
and the Roman nature, so striking in view of the fact that the two peoples 
were originally one, 

2 The * Eternal Eastern Question,' Europe against Asia : spirit, man, 
against nature, force, numbers, which still agitates the Balkan Peninsula, 
was, it is not fanciful to say, the subject of the Trojan War. It recurred in 
the Persian Wars, the Punic Wars, the Crusades, at Lepanto, at Inkerman. 
Cf. Freeman, as above, Lect. I, and Contemp. Rev., May, 1884. 



§ 3 Organized Intelligence 

Lotze, as at § i. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V, i. Merivale, ch. xxii. 

In Greece thought first assumed system, struck deep 
roots, began to grasp problems with consciousness.^ At 
no other time has the human mind come so near the 
exertion of its supreme energy as in Attica during and 
just after the age of Pericles.^ Later too, as the politi- 
cal power of Athens waned, her supremacy in the re- 
public of letters waxed for centuries more and more per- 
fect and conspicuous.^ Among the Greeks, general 
literature, history, oratory, the drama, in a word the 
world's settled intellectual life, had their beginnings. 
So of systematic education, schools,* etc. : the Romans 
received these from Greece, and we, through the middle 
age, from them. Even in Rome's brightest day all her 
best literature and intellectual activity took their shape 
and inspiration in great degree from Hellas. Each suc- 
ceeding age, our own included, has been under a similar 
debt.5 

1 ' However much knowledge, skill and wisdom, as shown in maxims, 
earlier nations may have had and employed in the regulation of social 
relations and in systematic art, the thought of seeking out the very grounds 
and bases of our judgment of things, and of combining them demonstra- 
tively and deductively in a system of truths, the foundation, in fact, of 
science, will forever remain the glory of the Greeks.' — Lotze. 



^^ THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

2 Aeschylus [525-456], Sophocles [496-405], Euripides [480-406], 
Aristophanes [444-380], Herodotus [484-424], Thucydides [471-396], 
Phidias [490-432], Ictinus, Callicrates, Mnesicles [these three contemp. 
with Pericles], Polygnotus [contemp. with Phidias], Socrates [469-399], 
Zeno, Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Plato [429-347]. We prefer still, with 
Ranke, against Freeman, to latinize Greek names. 

^ Thus the early bishops of Rome were for three centuries mainly of 
Greek extraction. Their church, and most of the other churches in the 
West were Greek religious colonies, their language, organization, writers, 
scriptures and liturgy being Greek. — Milman, Lat. Ch'ty, Vol. I, 54. 
Novatian, about 250, is the first Roman clergyman known to have written 
in Latin, though possibly Victor, about 200, may have done so, 

* For the propagation of systematic education from the classic to the 
middle age we owe hardly less to Boethius [470-574] and Cassiodorus 
[480-575] at the court of Theodoric than to Alcuin and his colleagues at 
that of Karl the Great. Cf. Ch. V, § 9. 

5 * If their language is dead, yet the literature it enshrines is rammed 
with life as perhaps no other writing, except Shakespeare's. . . . Oblivion 
looks in the face of the Grecian Muse only to forget her errand.' — Lowell. 



§ 4 Philosophy 

Zellert as at § 2. Ueberweg, Hist, of Philos., I. Schulze, Philos. der Renaissance. 
Hefele, Councils, I. 

This as an orderly discipline owes its very birth to 
the Greeks, to their daring quest for truth mentioned 
above. The evolution of Greek metaphysical thinking 
comprises three movements, (i) ih^ materialistic ^ThA^^} 
Heraclitus, Empedocles, Democritus, (2) the idealistic 
or Eleatic-Socratic, culminating in Platonism, (3) the 
Aristotelian^ a combination, in a way the reconciliation, 
of the first two. If in its moral aspect we classify New- 
Platonism as oriental, Greek ethical philosophizing re- 
duces to Stoicism and Epicureanism, two antagonistic 
doctrines still at war to-day. These great schools long 
outlasted Greece. From the time of the Antofiines till 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 6/ 

silenced by Justinian's edict,^ 529, an unbroken line of 
philosophers : Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics and Epi- 
cureans, taught in Athens at public cost. The influ- 
ence of their doctrines was absorbed rather than de- 
stroyed by the prevalence of Christianity. Stoicism 
spread westward, passing into Roman law and Christian 
life ; Platonism, tinged now with theosophy, loved the 
East, affecting Christian doctrine and discussion more. 
Three great conceptions peculiar to Platonism are pres- 
ent in the Nicene creed.^ In the middle age, Aristotle, 
as * the philosopher,' exercised prodigious and incredible 
influence,* lessened toward the Renaissance by the ris- 
ing popularity of Plato. Even now, no deep philoso- 
pheme can be thoroughly handled without recurring to 
the thoughts of these incomparable masters. 

1 Not an accident that Greek materialism had its origin and chief seat 
in Asia. Cf. § 3. 

2 Proclus, 412-483 A.D., lived and taught at Athens. His pupils, 
Isidorus, Damascius and Simplicius were the last ancient public teachers 
of heathen philosophy. When Justinian, lusting for the revenues, closed 
the Athenian schools, they fled to Persia, subsequently returning, but never 
teaching again. All three died in obscurity. — Gibbon, IV, 108 sqq. 

^ Arius used Plato's world-soul as schema for the Logos or second 
person of the Trinity; Athanasius, Plato's supreme * Good.' The Sabellian 
undertone of the creed echoes the attribute-hypostasizing utterances of 
New-Platonism, so often heard in Philo. Cf. Gibbon, II, 215 sqq.; Bright, 
Notes on Canons of First Four Gen'l Councils; also Rickey , Nicene Creed 
and the Filioqiie. The Greek fathers freely referred to Plato as an author- 
ity on the Trinity, the two natures of Christ and the unity of mankind. 
Justin Martyr calls Plato a Christian, Athenagoras sees in the doctrines 
of the philosophers and especially of Plato, the activity of the divine Logos. 
Augustine admits that the New-Platonists, though without revelation, 
possess the doctrine of the Trinity, 

^ When the Jesuit, Scheiner, contemporary with Galileo in observing 
the spots on the sun, made known his discovery to his provincial superior, 



68 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

the latter refused to believe in the spots or even to look through the 
telescope, saying that he had read Aristotle through many times without 
finding aught like what Scheiner mentioned. This distemper Hcbbes 
called ' Aristotelity.' — Bisset, Essays on Hist'l Truth, 79. 



§ 5 Art 

Reber, Hist, of Ancient Art, do. of Mediaeval Art. Wolimann and Woermanjt, Hist, 
of Painting. Overbeck, Gesch. d. grieschischen Plastik. Perrot and Chipiez, 
Ancient Art. 'Archaeology ' in Encyc. Brit. Mitchell, Ancient Sculpture, x-xxxvi. 

The Greeks surpassed all other peoples in the keen- 
ness and discipline of their sense of beauty. This was 
a radical trait, one of those through which they have 
most influenced subsequent ages. All classical art was 
essentially Greek, whether originating in Rome, Magna 
Graecia or Etruria, though early Etruscan betrays marked 
oriental influence. No proper Roman school or Chris- 
tian school ever rose.^ Under Augustus, under Ha- 
drian even, few other than Greek artists wrought, none 
but Greek models and traditions were followed. While 
in Painting we have no easel pictures, and from the 
greatest artists no works whatever, innumerable mosaics, 
wall decorations, vases, etc. ,2 where imitators have end- 
lessly repeated the old masterpieces, justify the fame of 
Polygnotus, Zeuxis, Apelles and the rest. Leading 
characteristics of this old painting were {a) beauty of 
forms, especially of human, {b) diversity of subject, 
{c) fineness and grandeur of conception, {d) economy 
and simplicity of means in producing intended effects, 
{e) poverty in execution relatively to excellence of con- 
ception. Doubtless the last is truer of extant speci- 
mens than of their originals. In the other departments 
of antique art we are more fortunate, possessing the 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 69 

richest variety and number of original specimens, evi- 
dently from the best, some of them as yet unsurpassed 
if not absolutely perfect.^ All that Greek SctUptiirey in 
comparison, e.g., with Michel Angelo's, lost in power 
through negligence of anatomy, it gained in grace by 
diligent and practised notice of living forms. The great 
Greek styles of ArcJiitecUire^ Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, 
have never been superseded or improved. Along with 
changes in minor elements, the principles, proportions 
and general form of all fine buildings since, Gothic in- 
cluded, have reproduced the classic tradition. Even de- 
parture from the antique in details, taste has twice, at 
the Renaissance and again at the close of the last cen- 
tury, emphatically condemned, commanding return to 
classic models. 

1 On the lack of art taste in the Romans proper, Friedlander, Siitengesch. 
Roms, Th. II, 103, III, 105 sq. The same author has also a brochure, 
Ueber den Kunstsinn der Romer in der Kaiserzeit, which evoked a reply 
with similar title from K. F. Hermann, defending the Romans. But in 
Hermann's Kulturgesch. der Griechen u. Roi/ier, 126 and 154, Roman 
taste is characterized nearly as unfavorably as by Friedlander. Tacitus, 
dial, de oratt., c. 10 : Ut seniel vidit, transit et contenttis est, tit si pictura??i 
aliqiiam stattiatjwe vldisset. Cf. Cicero, de legg., II, ii, 4. Consul L. 
Mummius, having conquered Corinth, 148 or 147 B.C., in forwarding the 
pictures and statues to Rome, told the sailors that if they lost or damaged 
any, they would have to replace them with others of equal value. The 
Basilica may be accounted a Roman product. The Arch and Dome, 
though importations (Ch. II, § 9, n. 5), received development and per- 
fection at Rome. Nero's new Rome, after the great fire of a.d. 64, was 
built in the most perfect Greek fashion, as had been, indeed, all the public 
structures reared since the accession of Augustus. Cf. Merivale, liii. The 
Antinous-cycle of representations comes nearer than aught else in plastic 
art to being of Roman origination. It arose in Hadrian's time. The finest 
Antinous is in the Capitoline Museum. In all the Christian art for cen- 
turies God and Christ were figured with Apollo's head. On art at Rome, 
Mitchell, xxxiv-xxxvi. 



70 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

2 Preserved with Pompeii, and elsewhere. The best Pompeian pieces 
are now in the Naples Museum. 

3 Not only in sculpture and architecture, but also in drawing, the Greeks 
quite equalled the moderns. They did little in music. 

§ 6 Political Ideas 

Freemati, Comparative Politics; Hist, of Federal Government, I. Lecky, Rationalism 
in Europe, II, 218 sqq. Heere^i, Politics of Anc. Greece, ch. ix. Mofitesqui'eji, Spirit 
of the Lav/s. May, Democracy in Europe, I, ii-v. 

The Greeks are our earliest instructors in politics, 
with their notions of which they have impressed man- 
kind in four ways : i Through great statesmen and law- 
givers. Thus the twelve tables of Roman law and the 
Servian Constitution ^ were drawn up after study of 
Grecian models and maxims, ii Through the political 
writings of philosophers, chief of which, Plato's Repub- 
lic and Aristotle's Politics. ^ iii Through their actual 
forms of government.^ Greece furnished the types of 
nearly all the governmental polities which have had 
place since : i Royalty, {a) the old-Aryan or heroic, 
of Homeric times, {b) the more absolute Macedonian, 
if) the effete or nominal Spartan. 2 Aristocracy, 
(a) more oligarchical, Sparta, (d) more democratic, 
Athens. 3 Federations, (a) with single supreme head, 
the Athenian supremacy, the Spartan, the Theban, the 
Macedonian, — such leagues sometimes free, sometimes 
forced, (d) on a footing of equality, the Achaean and 
Aetolian Leagues.* iv Through the history of the in- 
teraction, vicissitudes and destinies of these differently 
constituted states and confederacies.^ Besides these 
legitimate polities, tyranny showed itself in Greece, now 
for good, now for evil.^ Evoked in part by this was 
that zeal for freedom, so strong and general in the Hel- 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 7I 

lenic race, which burns in the orations of Demosthenes. 
As individual tyranny fostered this spirit, the tyranny 
of states over states bred patriotism, not identical with 
the other sentiment, yet nearer to it then than now, 
since Antiquity made more of civil than of personal 
liberty,^ 

1 Mommsen, I, 141, 364. Ortolan's and Heron's doubt as to Greek 
influence upon the xii Tables seems ill founded. 

2 See the pol. writings of Algernon Sidney, Locke and Montesquieu. 
Hobbes, Leviathan, xxix : ' And as to rebellion, in particular against 
monarchy, one of the most frequent causes of it is the reading of the books 
of policy and the histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans.' The tirade 
continues at some length. 

3 Grote, Pt. II, ix. Compare Grote's fervor for Grecian democracy with 
the coolness of Mitford and Curtius. 

* Freeman, Fed. Gov't, has the most satisfactory account of these 
Leagues. Cf. Smith's Greece, ch. xlvi; Thirlwall, Ixi [Achaean], Ixiii 
[ Aetolian] ; Tozer, * Greece,' sec. ii, in Encyc. Brit. 

^ Grote, as at n. 3. Aristotle, Politics, V, i-v. Philip did not think of 
conquering Greece, as Alexander conquered Persia. He sought merely a 
Macedonian headship, like that which Epaminondas had procured for 
Thebes. — Droysen, Gesch. Alexanders, I, i. 

6 Cf. § 9. 

§ 7 Propagation of these Elements 

Mo7nmsen, Rome, I, x. Freeman, Chief Periods, 13 sqq. Droysen, Gesch. Alex- 
anders des Grossen. Grote, xxii sqq. [colonies], xciv [Alexander]. Wtlliajns, 
Life of Alexander the Great. Thirlwall, Iv. 

Hellenic civilization forced itself upon the world 
partly by its sheer superiority, by the mental domi- 
nance,^ natural and acquired, of its bearers, partly by 
colonization ^ and conquest. The Greeks were adepts 
in colonization, planting miniature Greek common- 
wealths on every shore, nearly every island, of the 
Mediterranean, and on the Euxine, early surpassing in 



72 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

this their teachers and rivals, the Phoenicians. Many 
of these remote regions equalled the mother land in cul- 
ture, outdid her in wealth. A still broader and more 
fruitful dissemination of Greek ideas attended the con- 
quering march of Alexander.^ The importance of his 
conquests was even greater than their magnitude would 
imply. His empire soon crumbled, but the civilization 
by him introduced remained, and, in Egypt and West 
Asia at least, effected tremendous changes. The seeds 
of civilization early sent by these lands to Greece were 
now paid for in the matured fruit. Asia was hellenized.* 
Alexandria long rivalled, then excelled, Athens as a 
focus of Hellenism. From here, not to speak of other 
influences, a new Judaism went forth, everywhere pro- 
foundly modifying the old, providentially preparing for 
Christianity. Also, at these oriental schools of Greek 
thought, not at Athens, were trained the great theo- 
logians, who outlined Christian doctrine for all time. 

1 Thus Macedon, Epirus and Acarnania, which even as late as Thucy- 
dides's time were practically in barbaric rudeness, at length fully assume 
the Greek spirit and culture. So Rome and Italy fell under Greek influ- 
ence, and to an extent the whole empire. With this should be remembered 
what Greece did to save civilization in a trying crisis. ' No enlightened 
man can think of the battles of Marathon and Salamis without perceiving 
their important consequence to the race at large.' — Condorcet, quoted by 
Comte. 

2 Curtius, Die Gr. ah Meister d. Colonization^ Deutsche Rundschau, 
June, 1883. 

3 Grote, xciv, doubtless correctly, denies that this was any part of 
Alexander's intention. 

* In this dissemination of Greek culture Islam but carried further the 
work of the Diadochi, — Kugler, Crusades, 19. 



the classical period "jl 

§ 8 Rome : Genius and Place in History 

Schli'gsl, Philos. of Hist. Hegel, do., Pt. III. Lotze, as at § i. Freeman, Chiel 
Periods, i-iii; Contemp. Rev., May, 1884, Moinmsen, I, ii, iii, v. Milman, vol. 
vii, 174. 

Rome forms the centre of European history.^ Built 
out of older nations and absorbing their civilization — 
all civilization, whether Greek, Christian or other, could 
at length be called Roman — it broke up into the vari- 
ous European states, discharging thither the intellectual 
stores gathered from its own mighty life and from its 
incorporation of other commonwealths. In studying the 
Roman people one is struck by the preponderance in 
them of moral and practical over theoretical and scien- 
tific interests.^ Action, achievement, and, as means to 
these, order, system, law, forms, not attention to ideas 
or ideals as such, mark the Roman nature.^ Hence the 
Roman genius for organization, government, discipline, 
military performance * and conquest ; hence the Roman 
family, army, law, religion, church, the firmly centralized 
ecclesiastical polity of the middle age, and the domi- 
nance even till now of legal conceptions in European 
and American theology.^ 

1 'The centre of our studies, the goal of our thoughts, the point to 
which all paths lead and the point from which all paths start again, is to 
be found in Rome and her abiding power.' — Freeman. He calls this 
great truth the ' groundwork of all sound historic teaching,' and continu- 
ally, though none too often, repeats it. ' He who ends his work in 476 
and he who begins his work in 476 can neither of them ever understand in 
its fulness the abiding life of Rome; neither can fully grasp the depth and 
power of that truest of all sayings which speaks of Rome as the Eternal 
City.' As the rise of Rome was central in history, the Second Punic 
War was central in the rise of Rome. 

2 * Greece lived from hand to mouth, passionately pursuing immediate 
ends, while the Romans were guided by a wider view, embracing the 



74 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

future. . . . Greece still lives, though without any striking influence on 
the conditions of our lives, but countless present social and political ar- 
rangements and a great part of our mental life may be traced back along 
unbroken tradition to Rome.' — Lotze. 

3 Milman, Lat. Ch'ty, Vol. I, 27. Heeren, Pol. Discourses, 118, notices 
that the peninsula of Italy never gave birth to any theory, either in Roman 
times or since. On the other hand, as Adam Smith, Wealth of Na., V, i, 
keenly observed, no state in Greece ever developed lazu into a science, as 
did the Romans. 

4 There seems to have been a continuous military tradition as to tactics, 
strategy, and the whole art of war, from Caesar and Trajan to Napoleon 
and von Moltke. Far more important among our unnoticed inheritances 
from Rome is the holding of land in severalty, as propritwi, instead of 
that community-holding which prevailed among our German ancestors and 
even at primitive Rome itself. 

fi Fisher, Discussions in Hist, and Theol., 47 sqq. 

§ 9 Political Universality and Absolutism 

Freeman, as at § 8. Thierry, Tableau. Jung, Romanische Latidschaften d. rom. 

Reichs. 

The great eastern empires, caring and doing nothing 
for subjects, received no loyalty and fell before the first 
resolute foe. Three battles annihilated Persia. To the 
Greek states their own subjects were loyal enough, but 
conquered peoples they did not win. Rome both se- 
cured from her own citizens a better than Greek patri- 
otism, and incorporated as well as conquered the world. 
The necessary unity of the world-empire, and the neces- 
sary perpetuity of the city of Rome as centre of such 
empire, became axiomatic ideas, living on, tenacious, in- 
eradicable, quite through the middle age.^ Thus is to 
be explained the surprising respect had for Rome by all 
the barbarians, even in her decline.^ This result is the 
more wonderful in that it was not liberty as now con- 
ceived which Rome bestowed. All ancient states were 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 75 

absolute, assuming to dominate every department of in- 
dividual life, the state regarding itself the end and aim 
of the individual's existence.^ This idea, advocated by 
Plato, Sparta relentlessly carried out. Rome too, both 
in very early times and under the empire, made of citi- 
zens almost slaves to the state. So widely enforced 
and so debasing did this condition become in the later 
years of the old empire, that at length it apparently 
quenched all wish for a freer civil condition. The no- 
tion of absolute government became embodied in Roman 
public law, whence we see it in later times so asserting 
itself in France, in the mediaeval empire and in the 
church as to give their main character to whole periods 
of history.* 

^ Graf, Rojna nella me7?ioria e nelle imaginazione del medio evo [2 v., 
Turin, 1883]. Cf. Voigt, Wiederbelebtcng d. klassischen Alter ihn7ns, I, 2, 
and Dante's De Alonarckia. Tertullian, so early, had written that Rome 
would last as long as the world. 

2 Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, ch. iii. ' Rome ' ceased to mean a city. 
It meant the Roman world. Rome stood for civilization. The invaders, 
Attila excepted, had no wish to destroy. They were awed. Alaric thought 
the eastern emperor a divinity. Odoacer, at liberty to do so, shrunk 
from assuming the crown that he had jostled from Romulus Augustulus's 
head. 

^ ' It was not from any consciousness of his individual dignity or of the 
dignity of humanity that the citizen of the victorious republic repelled in- 
sult or injury; but to inflict stripes upon him was to insult the majestic 
city, to put fetters upon his limbs was to bind limbs that ought always to 
be free for the service of the state.' — Greene, View of American Revolu- 
tion, 109. Cf. Taine, Contemp. Rev., Oct., 1884, 507 sq. 

* The reference is especially to the days of Frederic Barbarossa in the 
empire, and of St. Louis and Philip the Fair in France. The canon law, 
which made the great popes so bold, was partly a reproduction, partly an 
imitation, of the civil. See Chaps. V and VI, and Guizot's Essai on the 
Roman municipal system. 



'j^ the classical period 

§ 10 The Latin Language 

Mi'lman, index, 'Latin language.' //a//«;«, Middle Ages, index, 'Learning'; Litera- 
ture of Europe, Li. Sistnondi, Literature of the South of Europe, I, i. 

If most else in Roman culture owed much to Greece, 
the Latin speech was a truly home growth.^ Its influ- 
ence is not easily overestimated. It has furnished all 
generations since with choice means of linguistic disci- 
pline, and it has been vehicle to them of a literature 
rivalling the Greek in beauty if not in originality or 
power. Till comparatively recent times Latin was, 
throughout all Western Europe, the medium of liturgy, 
literature, history, diplomacy, of law in its two kinds,^ of 
science, philosophy and theology in all their forms, and 
of all learned commerce both oral and written. It 
founded the various Romance tongues^ and has had 
powerful hand in shaping German and English. Preach- 
ing was first exclusively, then usually, then occasionally 
in Latin.* The Vulgate was long the world's religious 
code. It was principally in consequence of the univer- 
sal use of Latin in the church that : i This language 
took on a sacred character, which came to be associated 
with all Roman things. 2 For several centuries nearly 
the entire clergy was of Latin stock, filled with Roman 
ideas, ecclesiastical and other, which thus gained greatly 
in power over society. In this way survived, partly in- 
dependently, partly by mitigating barbarian manners, a 
culture in Italy, Provence and Spain, which could defy 
even the barbarians. 3 The Latin elements : roots, 
word-building, syntax, of the various vernacular tongues 
received greatly increased prominence.^ 4 The unity 
of Europe was made possible and furthered. 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 77 

1 Not, of course, that Latin had not by Cicero's time become considera- 
bly enriched by accession of Greek words. 

'■* I.e., civil and canon. 

^ Among which remember to place the Roumanian, German, too, is 
far more Romanic than commonly thought. Compare Ulfilas's Bible with 
Luther's. 

* The Council of Trent [session 4], so late, orders the Vulgate to be 
taken pro authentica, and virtually places it above the original. Texts for 
sermons were to be drawn only from it. 

^ A third of the modern German vocabulary, word-forms and grammat- 
ical law is of Romanic origin. 



§ 1 1 Roman Law 

Gibbon, ch. xliv. Ortolan, Explication historique des Institnis. Morey, Roman 
Law. Hadley, Int. to Roman Law. Hunter, do. Mommsen, I, xi, II, viii. 
Thierry, Tableaie, IV. Willems, Droit public romain. Roby, Int. to Justinian's 
Digest. Guizot, Civilization in France, Lect. x and xi. 

The savage provisions of primitive Roman law, the 
powers^ it gave to creditors and to fathers, were done 
away mainly by three influences : i The praetorship. 
The urban praetor was judge, but the peregrinus had a 
function largely legislative. He was free to apply the 
law of nature and the best laws of all peoples, as well as 
to appeal to reason and equity. So were the provincial 
praetors. With the increase at Rome of a cosmopolitan 
spirit this quasi-legislation proved more and more feli- 
citous. The edictum perpettmm ^ of the praetors became 
a compend of rational law, reacting by its superiority, 
upon that of the xii tables and gradually forcing this 
into desuetude. 2 Imperial legislation. Very many 
emperors, especially between Nero and Commodus, 
were at once wise and truly solicitous for the good of 
their subjects. Under the empire, imperial constitu- 
tions were practically the sole source of law. As they 



yS THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

were framed with the advice of the ablest lawyers, some 
of the best laws proceeded from the worst emperors.^ 
3 Scientific jiLrisprndence. This grew out of the ex- 
perience and the discussions incident to praetorian ad- 
ministration, and partook the rational and human char- 
acter of the same. The influence of law schools and of 
eminent jurisconsults was immense and often direct. 
Thus Augustus formed a special board of jurists to have 
authoritative review of all doubtful judicial decisions, an 
arrangement lasting, modified, till Justinian. From 
these potent causes resulted an entire transformation of 
the old law, making it humane for barbarous, human for 
merely Roman, 'written reason.'* Codified by Theodo- 
sius II in the fifth century, more thoroughly by Justin- 
ian in the sixth, and contributing large matter to the 
codes of all the new kingdoms in the West,^ it could 
maintain itself in vigor through the darkest years of the 
following centuries. Raised to new life by ardent study 
at Bologna in the twelfth, it endures still, furnishing the 
spirit, principles and to a great extent the substance of 
all modern bodies of law,^ second in forwarding civiliza- 
tion to no single force save Christianity. 

1 Including power to put to death. * On the third market day [after 
judgment, the debt not having been paid] let them cut [the debtor] in 
pieces, and if they cut more or less it shall be no crime.'' — Tab. Ill, vi. 

2 Publishing the principles, modes and scope of their procedure, and 
styled * perpetual ' in contrast with edicta repentina, touching minor and 
occasional matters. Being changed but little it became * perpetual ' in a 
secondary sense, as it did in a tertiary when Hadrian made it legally per- 
manent. Marc Aurelius modified it and extended it over the provinces. 

^ Thus it was Caracalla who, in 212 A.D., gave its final extent, including 
all freemen in the empire, to the Roman franchise. From Augustus to 
Alexander Severus [d. 235 a.d.] was the golden age of Roman lawyers. 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 79 

The greatest of them, Papinian, was flourishing at 200; Caius, next in 
rank, at 150, The chief law schools were at Rome, Constantinople and 
Berytus [Beirut]. 

* *The pearl of Roman civilization, the development of law.' — Lotze. 
Neque voluit \_deus\ ut per nos tantuf?i lux jttstitiae eniteat, sed voluit ut 
per Ro77ianos quoque luceret et splenderet. — Apostolic Const., VI, 24. 

^ Ch. IV, § I. Roman law was at no moment disused in the West, the 
northern conquerors ruling by it all their Roman subjects. Besides, the 
works of Justinian, esp. the Pandects, were studied. Peter of Valence 
published in the 12th century a law-book, wherein he used material from 
every part of the Corpus juris : Institutes, Pandects, Code and Novels. 
Yet the discovery at the sack of Amalfi, 1135, of the Florentine copy of 
the Pandects greatly stimulated the study. — Guizot, Civilization in France, 
Lect. xi. There were two codes, the Gregorian and the Hermogenian, 
before A.d. 438, the date of the Theodosian. They were of private origin, 
and their date is uncertain. 

^ It has had least influence on English and American law, where it has 
been felt in chancery and equity almost alone. Louisiana, however, re- 
tains the Romanic basis given to her law when under French rule. Mac- 
kenzie's Roman Law exhibits ably and interestingly the Roman elements 
in modern European law. Savigny, Gesch. d. romischen Rechts im Mit- 
telalter [one vol. exists in Eng.], traces Roman law from the dissolution 
of Rome onward. The grand and peerless character of the law is best 
set forth in v. Ihering, Geist d. romischen Rechts. 

§ 12 Stoicism 

Thierry, Tableau III, iii. Cf. his art. in Revue des detix Mondes, Juin, 1873. 
Capes, Stoicism. Holland, Reign of the Stoics. Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans and 
Sceptics. 

This remarkable result was the combined effect of 
Christianity and Stoicism. It was through her law 
that Rome, contributing nothing to the original discus- 
sion of it, did most to perpetuate and enforce Greek 
philosophy. Chrysippus's conception of a law of nature, 
when rendered practical by Roman jurists, secured a 
sweep of influence in human thought and conduct to 
which no amount of mere speculation could have led. 



80 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

Literature as well as law caught the catholicity of tem- 
per. Velleius Paterculus ^ ascribes to the allies in the 
Social War a ' causa jiLstissima' Florus ^ even makes 
this a civil war, judging Rome's foes to be of Rome's 
own blood, a thought which he extends to all the races 
ruled by Augustus. 'The whole world is my country,' ^ 
cries Seneca, ' we are members of one great body ; na- 
ture made us relatives when she begat us from the same 
material and for the same destiny.' Lucan hails that 
* sacred love of the universe ' ^ which makes man * re- 
2:ard himself born not for himself but for the whole 
world.' Rome is exalted, at length deified,* as, with her 
now catholic extent and policy, a blessing to the race. 
Conservative Tacitus tolerates the empire for the 
provinces' sake. The elder Pliny admires 'the im- 
mense majesty of that Roman peace,' ^ which was well- 
nigh world-wide and unbroken from the day of Actium 
to the death of Commodus, 223 years. These senti- 
ments were not pat-tisan or doctrinaire, but pervaded 
the public heart. 

1 See Velleius Paterculus, II, 15, Florus, III, 18: Sociale bellum vocetur 
licet ut extenuinius invidiam, si verum tamen volumus ilhcd civile 
bellum fuit. Paterculus flourished under Tiberius and was with him in 
his German campaign against Maroboduus, 6 B.C. Florus was contem- 
porary with Trajan and Hadrian. Each wrote on Roman history. 

2 Epistles, xxviii, xcv; cons, ad Helviatn, vi. Seneca's innumerable 
utterances and quotations in this vein show conclusively that such humani- 
tarianism was not due to Christianity alone. Schmidt, to be sure, thinks 
Seneca and his fellow Stoics to have been greatly influenced by Christianity 
without knowing it. Better Merivale's thought, ' that the law of Rome 
w^as already a pedagogue, leading the nations unto Christ even before Christ 
Himself had appeared.' 

3 Pharsnlia. Lucan, b. 39 A.D., was Seneca's nephew. 

* Literally. In Smyrna and all over Asia there were altars to Roma as 
a goddess. — Thierry, 266. 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 8l 

^ Hist, nat.f xxvii, i. Aeternum, quaeso, deorum sit mtoius istud, 
he adds, adeo Romanos velut alteram lucefn dedisse rebus hw7ianis 
videnttir. Contrary to a very common fancy, the dominant spirit of im- 
perial Rome was not war or conquest. The greatest Caesars did not wish 
increase of territory, and waged offensive wars only to secure natural 
frontiers. Trajan was the sole exception, and some even of his conquests, 
as in Dacia and Arabia, had a defensive aim. The effort of the emperors 
was to break down the barriers between peoples within the empire, and 
to develop a homogeneous civilization for the entire Roman world. — 
Thierry, i8i sq.; Gibbon, i. ' If an angel of the Lord were to strike the 
balance whether the domain ruled by Severus Antoninus was governed 
with the greater intelligence and humanity then or now, whether civiliza- 
tion and national prosperity generally have since then advanced or retro- 
graded, it is very doubtful Avhether the decision would prove in favor of 
the present.' — Mommsen, Int. to Bk, VIII. 



§ 13 The Municipium 

Kuhn, Verfassung der romischen Staedte. Savig?iy, Gesch. des roinischen Rechts 
itn Mittclalter, I, i, ii. Marqiiardt-AIovunsen, Romische Alterihujfter, IV, 26 
sqq. Gziizot, Essais stir V hist, de France, i. Carl Hegel, Stadtever/assu7ig von 
Italien. 

In the course and sequel of coj^quest each Roman 
town became politically a copy of ancient Rome itself, 
curia for senate, duumvir for consul. From the be- 
ginning of the fifth century the hereditary curiales} 
earlier called decuriones, formed a not narrow property 
aristocracy, with some honors and immunities, which, 
as the empire decayed, were more than outweighed by 
burdens. The duumvir,^ elected annually by the cu- 
rials, was a judicial as well as an executive functionary, 
a court of first instance for all persons and causes not 
specially exempt from such jurisdiction. Besides these 
there were several other municipal officers, foremost 
among whom, from 330, was the defensor, popularly"^ 
elected each five years, to protect individuals, especially 



82 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

of the sub-curial classes, from unjust taxes and usage. 
The defensor, usually the bishop, from the first headed, 
at length, in many cases, comprised, the government, 
the rest dissolving in poverty and anarchy. Thus the 
municipal was the last part of Rome's political fabric to 
fall. Indeed, it seems certain that at least its spirit and 
general form never succumbed, and that more or fewer 
now existing French and Italian communes have had a 
nearly unbroken political life from Roman times.^ 

1 Above the curials stood a privileged class, exempt from taxation, com- 
prising clergy, soldiers, senators and any man bearing the title of ' claris- 
simiis ' [§ 14, n. 6]. Beneath the curials were the common people, virtually 
serfs, taxed, but destitute of political rights. It required but 25 jugera, or 
about 10 acres, of land to constitute one a curial. A curial v^^ho had held 
all the offices of his city passed into the privileged class. To certain 
degrading penalties also curials were not liable. For their burdens, and 
much else, see Ch, IV, § 5. 

2 Sometimes two \_dutif?iviri'\ or even four \_quatiuorvirf\. They were 
often called ' consuls,' as curials were ' senators ' and curia ' senate.' A 
defensor served 5 years till Justinian, then 2. No curial could be defensor. 
Other full officers were the censors, also called quinquenales. They were 
commissioners of public buildings, lands and moneys. Aediles and quaes- 
tors are mentioned. As holding munera or lower offices, the susceptor 
[tax-collector], the irenarchs [chiefs of police], the scribae or excerptores, 
and various sorts of curatores, as frumentarii, calendarii, etc., may be 
named. 

3 I.e., the clergy and the sub-curial freemen as well as the curials helped 
elect him. His function was analogous to the earlier one of the tribunes. 
Many defensors became counts of their cities. Being a magistrate a 
defensor might take the place of a provincial governor in his absence. 
He was authorized also to carry complaints directly to the praetorian pre- 
fect [§ 14]. Beneath the sub-curial free but by an interval small and ever 
lessening were slaves. 

* Savigny, as above, I, iv; Guizot, Civilization in France, Lect. xi; 
Duruy, Moyen Age, 274, 335; Kaufmann, detitsche Gesch., 11, 177, 413. 
Rome, Aix, Marseilles, Aries, Nismes, Narbonne and Toulouse are the 
clearest cases of continuity. In questioning, or minimizing, such continu- 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 83 

ity Carl Hegel stands nearly alone. * Dux ' became ' doge ' in No. Italy 
[not alone at Venice], as, in So. Italy, aTpaT'ny6s in the form ' stradigo ' has 
come down to quite recent times. In Italian, * dogana ' is still the name 
for custom-house. Rome's public dirt-carts are to this day marked 
S.P.Q.R. 

§ 14 The Imperial Organization 

Gibbon, iii, xvli, Freetnan, in Contemp. Rev., Nov,, 1884. Marqttardt-Mo7nmsen, 
IV. Thierry, Tableau, Livre II. Duruy, Moyeti Age, ch. i. Carl Hock, R. 
Gesch. vom Verfall d. Rep. bis zu Vollendutig d. UToftarchie unter Constantin, 
I. Gtiizot, Civilization in France, Vol. Ill, 203 sqq. Kuhn, Verf. d, rom, Reichs. 

This splendid and colossal mechanism, v^rithout un- 
derstanding which no chapter of mediaeval history is 
clear, was perfected by slow degrees, mainly by Hadrian, 
Diocletian and Constantine. The empire, however 
divided, was to the last a unit in theory.^ Kingdoms 
once ' confederate ' or ' allied ' ^ with Rome, gradually 
became provinces, and in these the distinction between 
senatorial and imperial passed away. Under and after 
Diocletian, the empire was divided into four prefec- 
tures,^ each with its prefect, to whom, as to the whole 
administration of the government, Constantine imparted 
a purely civil character. Prefectures fell asunder, 
much according to old national lines, into dioceses, of 
which, including the independent dioceses of Rome and 
Constantinople, there were fifteen. Each diocese had 
its vice-prefect, and was composed of provinces. These, 
too, had presidents, under whom, again, stood the mag- 
istrates of cities and villages. A similar hierarchy pre- 
vailed in the army. Seven grand officers formed the 
imperial cabinet.* Each head of a prefecture, diocese 
or province had his numerous staff of aides, the chief 
functions of these being to hold courts and to collect 
revenues. Noble roads and a swift post connected the 



84 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

capitals with the extreme provinces.^ While consuls 
and senate had in both capitals assumed a merely mu- 
nicipal function, holders present or past of high admin- 
istrative positions formed a new nobility, with rigorously 
determined etiquette, privilege and honors.^ 

1 I.e., when there were two emperors, each had his full authority every- 
where. Hock is especially good on the constitution under Augustus. Peter 
has leaned heavily on him. 

2 Both these kinds of states retained the forms of freedom, but the con- 
federate had the more of its substance. The senate could at any time 
write to an ally, as Augustus to Herod : ' So far you have ranked among 
my friends, henceforth I make you my servant.' — Thierry, Tab., 50. Cf. 
Marquardt-Mommsen as above, 44 sqq. 

3 Gaul, Italy, Illyricum, and the East. See Map. On the prefectures, 
Constantine's change of the prefect from a military to a civil officer, etc., 
Gibbon, xvii, and Freeman, Hist'l Geog., 76 sqq. To be noticed that the 
diocese Illyricum was not in the prefecture of that name. The dioceses 
Thrace and Constantinople were in the prefecture of the East. This word 
' diocese ' passed from civil into ecclesiastical use, as did ' consisto7'ium ^ 
the word for the emperor's cabinet. So ' ordo.^ 

* See for this and all that follows, Gibbon, ch. xvii. 

5 Friedlander, Sittengesch. Roms, Th. II, i, Die Reiseti. Gibbon, ch. i, 
ii. Caesarius, in Theodosius's t., journeyed fr. Antioch to Constantinople, 
665 miles, in about 6^ days. It was not unusual to travel 100 miles a day. 
Tiberius even went from Rome to what is now Holland at the average rate 
of nearly 12 miles an hour. On the death of Queen Elizabeth, at London, 
Thursday morning, Mch. 24, 1603, Sir Rob. Cary galloped for Holyrood 
to inform King James. The distance is about 350 miles. It has been 
thought a wonder that he arrived Saturday night. The Roman empire 
at its greatest extent was about 3000 miles long by 2000 wide. From the 
wall of Antonine in Britain across the empire in a southeast direction to 
Jerusalem was about 3740 miles. On the populousness of the emp., Wie- 
tersheim, Bevdlkcrtmg d. roni. Reichs. Ace. to Dionysius, the arms-bearing 
Romans at time of Servius TuUius numbered 80,700; at beginning of Re- 
public, 150,000; at end of I Punic War, 300,000; under Augustus, 4,137,- 
000; under Claudian, 6,940,000. 

6 The last consul, 541 A.D., 1294 v.c, was Flavius Basilius Junior. The 
senate came to an end II years later, 552. — Asbach, Zur Gesch. d. Con- 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 85 

sulats in d. romischen Kaiserzeit. On this new nobility, Gibbon, ch. xvii. 
There were the illustres [most noble], the spectabiles [right honorable], and 
the clarissimi [honorable]. 



§ 15 Rise of Christianity 

Gibbon, XV, xvi, xx, xxi. Milman, Bks. I, II. Ranke, Weltgesch. Theil III, v. 
Schlegel, Philos. of Hist., ch. x. Hegel, do., Pt. Ill, III, ii. Lotze, Mikrokosmus, 
VII, V. Cf. bibliog. to this Chapter, iii. 

While political Rome went down, the Christian 
church with incomparable vigor was daily gaining con- 
verts, perfecting organization, creating its mighty fu- 
ture. By the time of Trajan North Asia Minor has 
Christians everywhere.^ Soon after 150 the empire is 
studded with churches, a few existing even in Arabia, 
Persia and India. At first chiefly the poor, in the third 
century higher classes also, embrace the gospel. It in- 
fluences the court itself.^ Its mode of progress is from 
cities outward into hamlets and country, mainly by 
natural contact of men, also through formal missions.^ 
Constantine's politic change of attitude toward the 
church, while vastly increasing the number of nominal 
believers, was less itself a victory for Christianity than 
a proof of the victory which this had already won. The 
church, though not yet in numerical majority,* repre- 
sented whatever was best in society, its living, aggres- 
sive, practical and moral elements.^ Majority came soon, 
but meant less than one wishes it had. Thus, the elec- 
tion, in 366, of a bishop of Rome, at once involves and 
disgraces the whole population of the city.^ Also the 
evanescence of heathenism from this time, results in 
considerable part from fashion and policy. Yet real 
Christianity still spread, and the church's progress even 



S6 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

after Constantine is nowise merely ecclesiastical. The 
sufficient cause of such conquest by Christianity was 
that it was a true religion, answering the deepest intel- 
lectual, moral and spiritual needs of souls. Con-causes 
were (i) the excellent examples of Christians, (2) their 
care of the poor and helpless, pagan as well as Chris- 
tian,^ (3) the apologies and preaching of their ablest 
clergy, (4) persecutions,^ nursing the heroic spirit in 
Christians themselves, sympathy in others, (5) unity of 
the Roman world in language, also through facile travel 
and communication, (6) unmeant cooperation of Stoi- 
cism and Platonism.^ 

1 We know this from the highly interesting correspondence between 
Trajan and Pliny the Younger, who was propraetor in Pontus, i03-'5. — 
Pliny's Letters, X, 97, 98. Ebers's * Emperor ' offers an impressive and 
truthful picture of Christianity in Egypt in Hadrian's time, 1 17-138. 

2 Marcia, the favorite concubine of Commodus, was favorable to the 
Christians. — Milman, ch. i. Philippians, IV, 22, probably refers only to 
servants and retainers. Some early bishops were slaves. Till 3d cent., 
the Roman ch. was composed of * rudes et impolitic 

^ Almost solely within the lines of the empire. Christian archaeology 
reveals that missionaries rarely if ever went in advance of the eagles. On 
early British Christianity, however, see Ch. V, § i. The Goths were chris- 
tianized by Christian captives. — Neander, Ch. Hist., II, i25-'9. 

* Tacitus, XV, 44, calls them an ingens muUitudo in Nero's time. About 
250, Christians may have numbered -^^ of the supposed million inhabitants 
of Rome. Their church had i bishop, 46 presbyters, 7 deacons, 7 sub- 
deacons, 42 acolyths, 50 readers, exorcists, and porters, and 1500 bene- 
ficiaries, i.e., widows, sick and poor. — Eusebius, vi 43. About 400 the 
ch. of Antioch embraced 100,000 souls [3000 of them beneficiaries], 
probably about \ the city's population. 

^ Not likely that Constantine meant to profess conversion. He simply 
substituted a better for a poorer state-religion. He was, of course, the 
head of the new as previously of the old. Rome had always made relig- 
ion a state affair, and the promotion of Christianity caused no change in 
this. I.e., Dante's state-church theory [Ch. V, § 11] was identical with 
that of the Roman Republic. 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 8/ 

^ Milman, I, ii. Damasus the successful candidate was opposed by 
Ursicinus. Churches were garrisoned, besieged, stormed, deluged with 
blood. The prefect could not keep the peace. In the basilica of Sisinnius 
one day over 1 30 dead bodies were counted. 

■^ Uhlhorn, Christian Charity in the Anc. Ch. Cf. next §, also Ebers, 
* Emperor,' 

^ Persecutions of Christians were partly popular and unauthorized, the 
heathen populace believing them to be 'dOeoi, haters of the gods, and so 
authors of tempests, plagues, etc., and partly from regular legal prosecution. 
The crimen, contrary to what has usually been thought, was rarely, if ever, 
that of adhering to a religio illicita, for to all such Rome was most tole- 
rant, but that of laesa majestas, or treason, in not paying homage to the 
emperors. But membership in an illicit collegium or attachment to an 
illicit religion was often used in evidence. That the Christians commonly 
met in secret was special ground of suspicion against them. 

** See Merivale, Conversion of Rom. Emp., Lect. v. 



§ 16 Its Influence 

Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire. Sidgwick, ' Ethics,' in Encyc. Brit, [also 
in sep. vol.]. Schmidt, Essai sur societe dans le tnonde romain et sa transfor- 
mation par I e Christianisme [Paris, 1853]. von Sybel, Kleine hist. Schriften, 
I,i. 

'Without dwelling on the immense impetus given to 
the practice of social duty generally, by , the religion 
that made beneficence a form of divine service and 
identified piety with pity, we have to put down as defi- 
nite changes introduced by Christianity into the current 
moral view, (i) the severe condemnation and final sup- 
pression of the practice of exposing infants, (2) effective 
abhorrence of the barbarism of gladiatorial combats,^ 
(3) immediate moral mitigation of slavery and a strong 
encouragement of emancipation,^ (4) great extension of 
the eleemosynary provision made for the sick and the 
poor.' While cosmopolitan spirit and belief in human 
unity are partly due to Stoicism and to Roman experi- 



88 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

ence of the world, Christianity was beyond question 
their chief spring and strength. The increase from 
Gaius to Justinian, of humanity and of reverence fci 
natural ties in laws of marriage and succession, points 
likewise to Christianity.^ The idea of progress must 
be credited to Christianity exclusively. Cicero's, Lu- 
cretius's, Seneca's, Aurelius's works will be searched in 
vain ' for a single expression of reliance on the progres- 
sive improvement of mankind.' It is another of Chris- 
tianity's rare merits to have supplied that union of 
practical with ideal aims, at once so attractive and so 
elevating to the Roman, which made Rome, centuries 
long, the efficient moral and religious centre of Europe. 

1 Friedlander, Sittengesch. Rovis, Th. II, ii. 

2 The lex Cornelia de sicariis, under Sulla, 8 1 B.C., made the killing of 
another man's slave homicide. Antoninus Pius, 138-161, placed in the 
same category the causeless killing of one's own. — Justinian, Inst., I, viii. 
The same benign prince ordained that masters who were cruel to their 
slaves should be forced to sell them, ' for the public weal demands that no 
one wrongfully use his property.' The code of Justinian, 534, shows but 
little advance upon the above in mercy toward slaves. It, however, en- 
joins masters to send sick and worn-out slaves to the public hospitals, 
which were now open to them as to the poor free. Manumission also had 
been made easier. Cf. The Early Ch. and Slavery, in Lea's Studies. The 
church scrupled not to hold slaves upon its lands or to preach to them 
submission and industry, but it exhorted masters to mercy and proclaimed 
emancipation, especially by bishops and monasteries, as a species of pious 
act especially pleasing to God. Yet, on the whole, Christianity's action 
against slavery, considering its long power as a state religion, must be 
pronounced very slow. 

3 Morey, Roman Law, 149 sqq., admirably discusses this. Constantine 
made it murder for a father to kill his son. Giving a son in adoption re- 
quired the son's consent. A son, if a soldier, could hold the fee simple 
of property. Women too could do this. They could adopt children, 
could be guardians of their children and were no longer compelled to be 
under tutelage. 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 89 



§ 17 Early Church Organization 

Hatch, Organization of the Early Christian Churches. Lightfoot, Dissertation on the 
Christian Ministry, in Commentary on Phihppians. Andrews, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 
Jan., 1883. 

In the earliest ecclesiastical polity each town or city 
had but a single church, with its board of coequal 
bishop-elders. The function of these was service rather 
than office, oversight instead of preaching. By natural 
steps eldership became an office proper, and the head- 
ship of the board passed to an individual, who was at 
first mere prhmis inter pares, then veritable monarch. 
Soon, converts multiplying, every large church comes 
to comprise several congregations, each with its elder 
or elders ; and the bishop finds himself the head of a 
parish-diocese, enlarged in most cases by mission 
churches, which his has planted in the suburbs or be- 
yond.^ The analogy of this relation, and the example 
of the civil provincial regime, especially after the rise of 
provincial synods, brought among bishops themselves, 
preeminence to those of provincial and diocesan capi- 
tals. Like causes advanced to still higher dignity the 
bishops of churches founded by apostles ^ or otherwise 
specially eminent. The bishops of Alexandria, An- 
tioch, Ephesus, Corinth and Rome, later also the patri- 
arch of Constantinople, had this supreme rank. These 
exalted fathers call diocesan councils, consecrate met- 
ropolitans ^ and judge as courts of last instance. Such 
tendency toward centralization and firm organization in 
the church was furthered by (i) scriptural teachings 
and analogies,* (2) the influence and teaching of great 
doctors, (3) frequent synods ^ and councils, (4) the spec- 



90 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

tacle of the empire, (5) fiery opposition on the part of 
heretics and pagans. 

^ Not till the 3d century do we find x^P^'"''^'^'^^'^'*'^ ^^ bishops of coun- 
try villages, independent of city bishops. Churches in small centres, even 
when started independently, usually connected themselves with large ones. 

2 Ecclesia apostolica 7iiatrix ecclesiae was a proverb. 

3 The church of a provincial capital [as also its bishop] was called 
metropolitan, ecclesia primae sedis, in relation to the other churches of 
the province. In a word, the political organization [§ 14] was the schema 
for the ecclesiastical, the two exactly coinciding, except where a political 
capital chanced to be moved after the bishop's seat had become well fixed. 
Even in such cases, the bishop of the new capital sometimes received pro- 
motion, as Patroclus of Aries, in 417, Aries having been made capital of 
Gaul in 400. But Hilary, Patroclus's successor, was degraded again by 
Pope Leo I. 

* In what sense episcopacy is of scriptural authority, see Lightfoot, as 
above. The Jewish church and the unity ascribed by the N. T. to the 
churches of the Jerusalem circle offered influential analogies. 

° When, by 200, the synodal system had become established, each 
metropolitan used to convoke his clergy yearly, soon after Easter. 

§ 18 Rise of the Papacy 

Milman, bks. I, ii. Ka7ifina7i7i, deutsche Gesch., II, 235 sqq. Creighton, Hist, of 
Papacy during Reformation, ch. i. Wattenbach, Gesch. d. romischen Papstthums, 
[All the Church Histories have chapters on this.] 

Plainly such a system logically called for an individual 
centre. This it found in the bishop of Rome. The 
church of the imperial capital, the sole apostolic see in 
the West, upon soil sanctified by the blood of holy 
apostles and martyrs, had from its foundation been 
highly respected and influential in all sections of Chris- 
tendom. Yet its bishop became sovereign only after 
long evolution of opinion. The process comprised 
three periods : ^ i A headship in honor and rank is uni- 
versally accorded him in the way of comity. ^ ii He 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD QI 

claims supreme authority as a right, against opposers.^ 
iii Admission of this right becomes universal through- 
out the West as essential to orthodox belief. Tributary 
to this tremendous result were (i) the size, wealth, 
orthodoxy, liberality and missionary zeal of the Roman 
church, (2) reverence for Rome and the analogy of the 
monarchical empire, (3) the theory of Peter's primacy 
and of the transmission of the same,* (4) the influence 
of the Roman bishop at court when this was at Rome, 
(5) his power as virtually civil ruler when the court was 
at Ravenna or Constantinople,^ (6) his function as, in a 
way, appellate judge, recognized and confirmed by the 
Council of Sardica (343),^ (7) the doctrine of the church 
as the supreme earthly power, shaped and furthered by 
Augustine's City of God,'' (8) the passage, about 400, 
of the church's intellectual headship from the East to 
the West.^ Already Siricius (384-98) expects his de- 
cretal to be obeyed by all. Innocent I (402-'i6) will 
have all the bishops on earth apply to Saint Peter for 
light upon matters of faith. These encountered some 
resistance. It was reserved for Leo the Great (440-'6i), 
eloquent preacher, conqueror of Attila by a look, saviour 
of Italy from the Huns, far the ablest church leader 
that Rome had yet seen, properly to found the papal 
power as known to history, crushing all vigorous oppo- 
sition. He dictated the law of Valentinian III (445) 
which recognized the Roman see as the supreme legis- 
lative and judicial authority for the entire church, and 
at Chalcedon (451) his legates presided, absolving and 
condemning in his name. 

1 Comba, Storia della Ri forma in Italia, I, Int. [Florence, i88i], re- 
counts well the development of the papacy, the various efforts at reform 
and the whole early hist, of Ch'ty in Italy. 



92 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

2 As the archbishops of Armagh and St. Andrews for centuries before 
England became Great Britain deferred to him of Canterbury. The second 
ecumenical council, Constantinople, so late as 381, expressly declared the 
bishop of Constantinople to be the peer in rank with him of Rome. 
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, died 258. With extreme zeal and ability he 
defended the Roman bishop's primacy in rank. With equal energy, how- 
ever, he maintained that in authority, right and power all bishops are 
equal. To him the primacy of Peter even was only one of rank and gave 
him no power over his apostolic colleagues. Cyprian calls the bishop of 
Rome ' brother ' and ' colleague.' He disagrees with Stephen of Rome as 
to the validity of heretical baptism. Stephen refuses him communion and 
denounces him as a heretic. Yet this nowise affected Cyprian's ecclesiasti- 
cal status, and the church honors him to-day as a saint. 

2 Rome's claims kept far in advance of acquiescence in them. Cyprian 
in his controversy with Stephen translates a letter from Firmilian, bishop 
of Caesarea in Cappadocia, which denounces Stephen as an audacious and 
insolent heretic, and scoffs at his pretended descent from St. Peter. Eighty- 
seven bishops assembled in council at Carthage under Cyprian, asserted 
the independence of the African churches, and condemned the assumption 
by any bishop, Roman or other, of the title * bishop of bishops.' When 
in the Decian persecution the bishops of Leon and Astorga in Spain had 
lapsed, yet were defended by Stephen, Cyprian, with thirty-five other bishops, 
ratified their condemnation, and bade the churches of Leon and Astorga 
cling to the new bishops whom they had meantime chosen. Ambrose, 
Augustine and Sulpicius Severus, the historian, held fast to this view of 
episcopal coequality. 

* Based upon Matt, xvi, 18: 'Thou art Tlcrpos, and upon this TreV/sa 
will I build my church.' Each pope is supposed to be crowned directly 
over St. Peter's grave. The papal crown was made triple by John XXIII, 
who added a third coronet in 141 1. 

^ This influence and power were vast long before Ch'ty became the 
state religion, but greater, of course, after. Thus, when the Donatists 
appeal to Constantine, he turns the matter over at once to Pope Miltiades. 
— de Broglie, I, ii. 

^ Any bishop condemned by a provincial council might appeal to the 
Roman bishop. If the latter thought a new trial deserved, he referred the 
case to a council in another province. Sardica [which was not a general 
council at all] gave him only this right to order a new trial, not that of 
final judgment. . 

'^ As Constantine's theory of the church was one with Dante's [§ 15, n. 5], 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 93 

Augustine's was the early form of Gregory VII's [Ch. V, § ii]. The state 
is nothing, save for the church. The emperor must serve the church. 
If he refuses, he is no better than a great robber. 

^ Represented esp. by Ambrose, 340-397; Jerome, 340-420; and Au- 
gustine, 354-430. These men repudiated Rome's jural primacy, but by 
their greatness, coupled with their insistence upon the church's unity and 
supremacy, they mightily aided Rome in securing such. Intellectually in- 
dependent, the West felt no lack when the East drew off, and in the West 
no church could vie with that of Rome for first place. Carthage might 
have thought of this but for Vandal ravages. Indeed, pressed by the Arian 
and heathen Teutons, the churches of Gaul, Spain and Africa were fain 
to crave help from Rome, instead of defying her. And by this time Rome 
meant the church of Rome. Cf. Chapter IV, § 19. 

§ 19 Theological Controversy 

Milmari, bks. i-iii. Gibboti, xx, xxi, xlvii. Sheldon, Hist, of Christian Doctrine. 
Hagenbach, do. Shedd, do. Neander, Church Hist., II. 

In no way more than through this has the early- 
church shaped modern thinking. The head subjects 
of difference were three, mainly affecting, the first two 
the West, the third the East : i Grace and Free-will. 
Pelagius declared man's will free after, Augustine, en- 
slaved through, Adam's fall. Pelagius thought grace 
only an aid to, Augustine, the cause of, all holy human 
volition. Augustine was victorious at the time though 
final orthodoxy much modified his views, ii The Na- 
ture of the Church, i The Novatianists mercilessly ex- 
cluded penitent lapsi} 2 The Donatists, an African 
sect, conditioned valid priestly functioning upon per- 
sonal worthiness in the priest. They waged against 
the catholics a long, truceless and bloody war. iii TJie 
Nature of Christ, i Within himself. Nestorius, sharp- 
ly sundering human from divine, gave Christ a double 
personality. Eutyches and the Monophysites,^ the lat- 



94 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

ter a sect long powerful in the East, went to the oppo- 
site extreme, losing his humanity in his divinity. 2 hi 
relation to the Father. Monarc J danism was a professed 
special defence of God's unity, having many variant 
phases, all of which agreed in the subordination of the 
Son.^ Substantially the same heresy though far more 
definite, earnest and influential, shaking Christendom to 
its base, was Arianism, esteeming Christ a creature, 
yet in virtue of his higher nature, superhuman, creator 
of the world and worthy of divine worship. The con- 
trary view, making Christ's higher nature eternal, un- 
create and in the fullest sense divine, entered the creed 
at Nicaea, 325, yet like Athanasius its indomitable de- 
fender, had to wait and fight long for general recogni- 
tion as from God.^ 

1 Those, that is, who had in some way made terms with the persecuting 
authorities, as by surrendering the sacred scriptures, burning incense to 
the emperor, or sacrificing to the heathen gods. Cf. § 15, n. 8. Novatian 
was a presbyter at Rome, whence his doctrine spread to all parts of the 
church. Novatianists refused communion with catholic Christians, and 
rebaptized converts from them. Severe as they were they did not deny to 
the lapsed hope of mercy in another life. Substantially the same idea of 
the true church as a holy community [/ca^apoi] inspired the Donatists. 
The catholic party, on the other hand, took a broad church attitude. 

^ Eutyches was condemned by the Council of Chalcedon, 451. His 
followers were especially numerous in Egypt. They were wont to call 
Mary the mother of God, and to say that God suffered on the cross [patri- 
passianism]. This shocked Nestorius as veritable heathenism. Cynl of 
Alexandria took up arms against Nestorius, virtually denying Christ's 
human nature. He won the Roman bishop by making Nestorius's view 
appear Pelagian. Monothelitism in the 7th century, teaching that Christ 
possessed two natures but only a single will, was an attempt to mediate 
in this controversy. 

3 Sabellianism was the most popular form of this heresy. Advocates of 
fiovapxia, or the singleness of the divine essence, admitted the divinity and 
uncreatedness of Christ's higher nature, but denied its separate personality 
before his human birth. 



THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 95 

* For a century and more it was doubtful whether Arianism would not 
become accepted as orthodoxy. Several emperors were Arians. The tragic 
story of * Athanasius contra mtindtim ' may be read in any of the Church 
Histories. Cf. J. H. Newman, Arians of the 4th Century. 



§ 20 Other Influence of the Church 

Gibbon, as at § 19. Lea [Studies in Ch. Hist. J, ' Benefit of Clergy/ ' Rise of Temporal 
Power,' and ' Excommunication.' Milman, HI, v. 

Highly noteworthy was the church's function in 
(i) producing great men,^ (2) importing monachism,^ 
(3) enforcing clerical celibacy,^ (4) enacting creeds and 
discipline/ (5) perpetuating elements of heathenism.^ 
Further, the church assumed momentous relations with 
the empire. It drew emperors into its quarrels, invok- 
ing the civil arm against heretics, thus painfully sub- 
jecting itself to the secular power. Emperors listened 
to appeals from bishops' courts, held councils, at which 
they or their delegates presided, and gave to consiliar 
decrees the force of imperial laws. Imperial influence 
in deciding what was orthodoxy, and in appointing to 
ecclesiastical offices induced, especially in the East, 
great servility in the higher clergy. In return church 
invaded state. The right of asylum passed from a few 
temples to all churches, dreadfully interfering with jus- 
tice. The clergy as a class became by far the strongest 
power in the empire. They could discipline exalted 
wrong-doers who defied civil process. They regulated 
legislation and practice in respect to marriage, divorce 
and bequests. No civil court could try a clerk.^ The 
bishop everywhere administered the wealth, often im- 
mense, of his church, practically as if his own. In the 
new kingdoms he was the superior, associate and ad- 



96 THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 

viser of the victors, the advocate and friend of the van- 
quished. As defensor, a civil officer, he stood for Rome 
long after all other visible elements of the old society- 
had vanished. This double character made him incal- 
culably influential in conserving Roman laws and cus- 
toms during their stormy passage into the life of the 
new states of the West. 

1 Ecclesiastical promotion took the place of secular as an object of 
ambition. Besides Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine, those living wholly 
or partly in the 5th century alone would make a long list. Chrysostom, 
Innocent I, Pelagius, Nestorius, Leo I, Gregory of Nazianzen, Gregory of 
Nyssa and Hilary were all extraordinary men. 

2 Gibbon, ch. xxxvii, gives an excellent account. Cf. Milman, III, iv. 
For an exhaustive treatment of Monasticism, Montalembert, Monks of the 
"West, 7 vols. 

^ See Ch. V, the contest for this on the part of Hildebrand. He 
probably had the laity on his side. Clerical opposition was in some 
localities overborne in Hildebrand's favor by public opinion. — Freitag, 
Bilder aus d. d. Vergangenheit, I, 519; Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy. 

* Creeds mostly grew up in the East; discipline and organization were 
the care of the West. Few now have any notion of the extent to which 
Roman ecclesiastical organization abides even in the most ultra-Protestant 
churches of to-day. 

^ Priests sometimes called flamens, heathen festivals turned into Chris- 
tian, incense burned and votive offerings made in churches, etc. See 
Fisher, Discussions in Hist, and Theol., 34 sqq.; Milman, III, i. So the 
papacy itself. * If a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical 
dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost 
of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.' 
— Hobbes, Leviathan, pt. iv, xlvii. 

^ Purely ecclesiastical causes, of course, came before bishops' courts 
alone. Clergymen took civil litigations to bishops' court as a regular thing 
first under Justinian. In criminal cases clerks were held to appear in the 
civil court, until Valentinian III, 452, gave the plaintiff option between 
civil and ecclesiastical. Justinian sent certain clerical cases to each. 
Heraclius, 623, closed civil courts to clergymen altogether. Bishops were 
of course responsible to emperors, yet rarely was one condemned without 
the ' guilty ' of a council. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER IV 

Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, lo Books. Gibbon, De- 
cline and Fall.** Milman, Latin Christianity.** Hodgkin, Italy & 
Her Invaders,** 2 v. Sheppard, Fall of Rome and Rise of New Nation- 
alities** [much the best single vol. on the subj.]. Bryce, Holy Roman 
Empire, i,ii. Kingsley, Roman & Teuton. Dahn [inOncken], Urgeschich. 
d. ger7nanische7i u. romanischen V'olker, 2 v. Smyth, Lect. on Mod. H., I. 
Guizot, H. of Civilization in France,** I-III; do. in Europe ; Essais siir 
Vhist. de France* [1823]. Duruy, Moyen Age,* Liv. I. Stille', Studies 
in Mediaev. H.,* i, ii. Ozanam, H. of Civilization in Vth Cent.,* 2 v. de 
Coulanges, Institutions polit. de Vaiicienne France,** Pt. I. Leo, Gesch. 
d. Mittelalters, I. Kaufmann, Z?^z^/j<r/2^ Gesch.,** 2 v. Lecky, European 
Morals, 2 v. Sartorius, Italie sous les Goths. Fauriel, Hist, de la Gaule 
meridionale. Montesquieu, Grandeur & Declension of Rom. Emp. 
Late Rome. — Mommsen, H. of Rome, Bk. VIII. Hertzberg [in 
Oncken], Gesch. d. romischen Kaiserzeit;* Gesch. Griechenlands 
unter d. Herrsch. d. R'dmer,* 3 v.; Gesch- der Byzantiner u. d. 
osnianischen Reiches.* Ranke, Weltgesch.,* Th. IV. Thierry [Am.], 
Hist, rojnaine aux iv et v Sihles;* Tableau de Vemp. rotn., Liv. vi. 
The Early Germans. — Tacitus, Germariia** Arnold, Ansiedelim- 
gen u. Wanderungen deutscher Stdinr?ie ; Deutsche Urzeit;* Frdnkische 
Zeit, i, ii. Stubbs, Constl. H. of Eng., i-iii [excellent brief account]. 
Nitzsch, Gesch. d. d. Volkes,* I. v. Sybel, Entstehung d. d. Kdnigthu??is.* 
Waitz, D. Verfassungsgesch,** I. Sohm, Altdeutsche Reichs- u. Gerichtsv'- 
fassung,** I. Wietersheim, Volkerwanderungeyt, 2 v. [Dahn's ed., 
1 881, is best. See at end of vol. ii for an invaluable and nearly exhaustive 
list of the authorities for this Chapter, both original and secondary]. 
Lewis, H. of Germany. Dahn, K'onige d. Germanen ; Felicitas [the 
latter a novel]. Ozanam, Les Germains avant le Christianisvie.* 
V. Maurer, Gesch. d. Markenverfassung ; Dorfverfassung [2 v.] ; Staedte- 
verfassung [4 v.]. Ross, Early H. of Land-holding among the Germans, 
Giesebrecht, Gesch. d. deutschen Kaiserzeit, Bk. I. Church, Beg. of Mid. 
Ages [Ep. of H. Ser.]. 'The Conversion of the West'* [5 v., Soc. for 
Prom. Chtn. Knowl.]. Martin, H. de France, vols, i, ii. Adams, Man. 
of Histl. Lit., 276-'93 [gives a valuable list of works on early German 
institutions]. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 



§ I Signification and Significance 

Freeman, Goths at Ravenna [Hist'l Essays, lii ser.] . Gibbon, xxx-xxxviii. Sheppard, i. 

The study of the decline and dismemberment of the 
Roman state is second to none in all history for either 
importance or interest. To an understanding of the 
mediaeval or of the modern world it is indispensable. 
The external revolutions of the fifth century are a suf- 
ficient sign of altered times. At Theodosius's death 
(395) the empire presents nearly the same aspect as 
ever since Diocletian, yet before 500 the city is twice 
sacked,^ and Western Rome, saved from Attila near 
Troyes^ {451) only by a spasmodic effort^ lapses in 476. 
The Visigothic empire of South Gaul ^ and Spain dates 
from 41 5 (-7 11), that of the Vandals in Africa from 429 
(-534), the English in Britain from 449, the Prankish 
under Chlodovech ^ from 486, the Ostrogothic ^ in Italy 
from 493 (-5 5 5). Henceforth, apart from the momentary 
splendor of Justinian's reign, 527-65, old, great, his- 
toric Rome is no more. It is misleading to name this 
change a ' fall.' ^ Immense and momentous, it involved 
no sudden collapse even of government, the deposition 
of Romulus Augustulus being no crisis. It was rather 



100 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

a transformation, a re-grouping of parts and forces. .In 
a sense Rome exists to-day^: its language, law, munici- 
pal system, imperial idea in both church and state, as 
well as a mighty mass of unspecifiable influences in 
popular thought and life. The later Eastern and a later 
Western Rome each claimed, not without ground, to be 
the continued self of the old. And in such dissolution 
as did occur, energy was largely conserved, and elements 
passed to their new settings one by one. Rome broke 
up partly from internal causes,^ partly from external. 
Attend first to the former. 

1 By Alaric, 410, by Genseric, 455. Radagaisus, only that he was 
beaten by Stilicho at Faesulae, would have plundered the city in 406. It 
is to aid Stilicho against Alaric in 410 that Honorius recalls the last Roman 
soldiers from Britain. 

2 On Attila and the Huns, Montesquieu, ch. xix, and Thierry in Rev. 
d. d. Mondes, 1852, 1855. The location of the great battle is best discussed 
by Wietersheim in an excursus to ch. xv in vol. ii of his V'dlkerwander- 
ungen. He places it near Mery stir Seine, on the right bank, not far from 
Troyes but a good way from Chdlons, where Gibbon and all older writers 
locate it. 

^ For long the Visigoths held far more than half of Gaul, i.e., to the 
Loire, and their capital was Toulouse [ Tolosa\. Their frontier drew south- 
ward with Frankish advance [§ 17], and from 507 they were a merely 
Spanish power. 

4 I.e., Clovis, spelled as by Gregory of Tours, omitting the Latin termi- 
nation. 

^ To complete the list of barbarian kingdoms on the soil of Rome add 
the Suevic in northwestern Spain from about 409 till absorbed by the Visi- 
gothic, the Btirgundian in the valley of the middle Rhone, from about 
413 till incorporated by the sons of Chlodovech [§ 17], 534, and the Lom- 
bard, M'hich supplanted the eastern empire in northern Italy in 568, but 
15 years after Justinian's conq., and existed under its own and the Frankish 
kings till 774. 

6 So Freeman, Contemp. Rev,, May, 1884, 668-678, also Oxford Inaug., 
* the great central fact of European history, the growth and the abiding 
power of Rome.' 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME Id 

■^ .See Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 370, and Sheppard, i. 

8 On these, cf. Gibbon, xxxviii [end], Ixxi; Montesquieu, Grandeur and 
Declension, ch. ix sqq.; Lecky, Eur. Mor., I. Merivale, eh. Ixviii; Blan- 
qui, Hist, of Pol. Economy, ch. vi-viii. It has been well remarked that in 
the fate of Rome if anywhere history has to be accounted for by Kultur- 
history. 

§ 2 Moral Decadence 

Gibbon, chaps, ii, vii. Merivale, xxii. Montmsen, V, xi. Friedl'dnder, Sitteiigesch. 
RojHs, Th. III. Mo7itesquieu, ch. x. 

The sturdy virtue of the early Romans, more theo- 
sophic ^ than rational in its basis, early gave way before 
Greek scepticism, whose attack, coincident in time with 
the full manhood of the Roman people, wrought here 
worse corruption and wreck than at home. Thus Roman 
toleration of religions sprung rather from indifference 
than from conviction. Debasing superstitions accom- 
panied the relaxation of faith, often in the same person. 
Astrology, Bacchanalia and devil-worship engaged minds 
the most cultivated. These ill influences were heisfht- 
ened by acquaintance with the dissolute East and also 
by wealth. Riches were badly distributed, fortunes and 
waste inordinate. Millionaires like Lucullus, Crassus 
and Herodes Atticus vied with one another in useless 
expenditure.^ In spite of passing improvement under 
the early empire, such luxury continued to breed every 
vice. Literature renounced noble aims, and art, after 
Hadrian, drooped to servile imitation.^ While cities and 
villas were rich with its best products the real art spirit 
was dead, supplanted by oriental relish for the colossal. 
Greek artists themselves had now ceased to create. 
Zest for life was rare,* misanthropy, gloom, despair 
prevalent. Depravity so widespread and deep even 



102 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

Christianity was unable to counteract otherwise than 
very gradually. The moral regeneration necessary to 
the salvation of the state could not be effected in season. 

1 Related rather to the Etruscan than to the Greek. 

2 LucuUus is said to have paid 50,000 denarii, above ^8,000, for a single 
supper. Pompey was worth 2,% million dollars, Aesopus the actor i mil- 
lion, Crassus at first 350 thousand, at the end of his career, after unheard- 
of largesses to the people, 8)^ million. Were purchasing power regarded, 
these sums would have to be much enlarged, perhaps doubled. We read 
that ^750,000 were once paid for a city house, ^200,000 for a country villa, 
^1200 often for a horse, ^50,000 once for a table of an African wood. 
Pliny declares that articles from India often appreciated 100 fold in coming 
to Rome, Table luxury was worst. Guests often took emetics after feast- 
ing. — Mommsen. See ibid., vol. iv, 614 sq., for the menu of such a feast, 
and for the debts of certain great Romans. Atticus, as became a preceptor 
of Aurelius, confessedly spent money more rationally, viz., in embellishing 
Athens, yet industrial investment was then more needed than gorgeous 
theatres. For the terribly interesting picture which Ammiahus draws of 
the Romans at the time of the Gothic invasion, see Gibbon, vol. iii, 252 
sqq. [ed. Milm.] . The Romans ate little beef, much pork. Flamininus, 
in Plutarch's life of him, relates that dining once with a friend, he de- 
murred at the large number of courses. ' Be easy,' was the reply, ' it's all 
hog's flesh, differing only in cooking and sauce.' 

^ On art at Rome see Ch. Ill, § 5, and notes; also Friedlander, III, ii. 

* Too many of Seneca's fine precepts are to direct how life may be en- 
dured rather than how it may be used. Strange that he should ever have 
been thought to have learned of Paul. 



§ 3 The Influence of the Church 

Thierry, Tableau, Liv. V. von Sybel, Kleine hist. Schriften I, 27 sqq. 

While doing so much to render Rome eternal in one 
way,^ the church, herein comparing unfavorably with 
Stoicism,^ not only failed to enforce or to cultivate the 
civic virtues but even antagonized these, becoming a 
most energetic solvent of political society. Christians 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME IO3 

believed the end of this world imminent, preparation 
for the next, man's sole legitimate business.^ This 
engrossing thought regulated all their views of duty. 
Retirement from active life was honored and rewarded, 
Tertullian boasted that 'nothing was so foreign to 
Christians as public affairs.' Till Constantine, the em- 
pire was usually identified with Antichrist, speedily to 
be consumed in the final fire.* Theological strifes tended 
to the same result. That over Arianism shook the world. 
The Donatists aided the Vandals. Catholic, especially 
clerical, influence, opposing Arian kingdoms indeed, 
yet decisively supported the invading Franks and Bur- 
gundians, so soon as orthodox. The East, home of meta- 
physical refinements, where theology became matter of 
discussion for the populace as for the learned, suffered 
total political paralysis through the mutual hatred of 
sects.^ 

1 It ' maintained and propagated afresh the feeling of a single Roman 
people throughout the world.' — Bryce. Cf. Fisher, Discussions, 45 sqq, 
Guizot is not rash in holding that it was alone the church with its organi- 
zation so solid and central that saved Christianity in the invasion-period, 
and Christianity was through many ages, at least in the West, Rome's 
affair. Church and clergy did much also to conserve Roman law. Sa- 
vigny's great work has a ch. on this. Venerandae romanae leges, wrote a 
9th century pope to the Franks, divinitus per ora principum promulgatae. 

2 Roman Stoics exalted service to the state as especially meritorious. 
Witness Aurelius, who with fatal self-forgetfulness ' readily exposed his 
person to eight winter campaigns on the frozen banks of the Danube.' — 
Gibbon. 

^ Even Augustine, in his Civitas dei declares that nothing on earth is of 
value save faith. Men have but one task, care for a future life. Safety in 
this regard is secured solely through the church. All human efforts are to 
be for the church. The state exists for her. So does the emperor. If he 
refuses her service he is but a robber-king, a servant of the devil, 

* Christians took account of Paul's words: 'The powers that be are 



104 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

ordained of God,' but supposed them ordained for sinners only, hence 
destined to be done away by the progress of Christianity. ' We loolc up 
to the emperor,' argues TertuUian, 'as one whom our God has elected. 
CKsar is ours all the more as being appointed \_constiiulus] by our God.' 
— Apology, 34. But the state might be from God yet carried on by 
Satan. Christians, continues Tertullian's Apology, 678, must needs pray 
for the state because although the end of the world is approaching it is 
retarded by the presence of the empire. 

^ E.g., in the iconoclastic strife. See Gibbon, xlix. It was much the 
same in all the controversies named in § 19. For the fight over Ari- 
anism, Gibbon, xxi; for that against the Paulicians, ibid., liv. 



§ 4 Death of the Military Spirit 

Gibbon, chaps, i, ii, vii, xvii, Momnisen, V, xi. Montesquieu, chaps, ix, xvi. 

Rome's early victories were gotten by citizen-soldiers, 
receiving small ^ pay or none, moved alone by zealous 
devotion to the state. Later, increased power relieved 
the citizens from the necessity of campaigning, while 
wealth enabled them to enlist provincials and foreigners. 
The service became splendid but mercenary, the soldiery 
a virtual caste, Roman only in name, fighting not for a 
cause but for a commander, their motive no longer 
patriotism but pay. To say nothing of innumerable 
laeti and auxiliaries,^ the regular soldiers of the later 
empire, praetorians,^ generals and all, were of barbarian 
stock, many of them born beyond the Roman pale. 
Even slaves were mustered in. No bond remained be- 
tween soldier and burgher; the less, as, to prevent 
revolts, burghers were forbidden to keep arms. Slowly 
but inevitably resulted : i Indisposition to military duty 
on the part of citizens when again wanted. Conscrip- 
tion even availed little, being eluded by flight or self- 
mutilation. 2 Unfitness therefor of such as did enter 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME IO5 

the army. 3 Total helplessness against invaders, the 
Roman armies being beaten. 4 Danger to the state, 
especially from praetorians, after the decline of disci- 
pline which inevitably followed the soldiers' discovery of 
their importance. 5 Gift of military education to hosts 
of officers and soldiers who used it against Rome.* 6 
Poverty through wages and bounties to soldiers and 
payments to threatening nations as price of peace. 

1 In early Rome military service was an honor, almost a mark of aris- 
tocracy. It was an epoch when, soon after v.c. 300, B.C. 454, Rome began 
to pay her soldiers regular wages. So late as the Punic wars the soldiers 
were burgesses and yeomen. T. Quintius Flamininus, consul v.c. 556, 
B.C. 198, was the first Roman general to enrol proletarians in the legions. 
It was still mainly a burgess-army till its reorganization under Marius. 
On this see Mommsen, IV, vi. After Marius, enlistment, not levy, was the 
great means of recruiting, yet to the very latest times the Roman army was 
formidable, a miracle of fighting energy. Under Constantine's successors 
the regular army commonly numbered about 645,000. 

2 The laeti were the soldier-colonists along the German border. They 
made themselves villages for camps, and did no fighting save as invasion 
was attempted. The arrangement was begun by Alexander Severus, 222- 
'35, that 'young philosopher who brought back for an instant the beautiful 
days of the Antonines, and in whose reign the old civilization shot up its 
last beam of glory.' — Secxeta.n, feoda/iie, 18. Lands were given to the 
laeti first by Probus, 276-'82, who thus colonized some thousands of Franks 
on the Rhine, where population had grown thin through barbarian attacks. 
The auxiliaries ox foederati were non-Roman armies with their own com- 
manders, accoutrements and discipline, in the service of Rome. The Visi- 
goths under Alaric bore for a time this relation. In the legions officers 
were old-Romans far longer than the rank and file. 

3 The famous jurisconsult Ulpian lost his life, A.D. 228, in trying to 
quell a rising of the praetorians commanded by him as praefectus praetorio. 
The number of these famous guards was much reduced by Diocletian and 
all were done away by Constantine. Constantine also multiplied the num- 
ber and reduced the strength of the legions. On these and the other 
military and the civil changes of this emperor, Gibbon, xvii. In the East, 
Justinian again united the two species of power. 



I06 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

4 Not in the civil wars alone. Maroboduus and Arminius had both i 
been educated among the Romans. Of course the mere fact that under the ; 
empire we find so many non-Italians in Rome's service is not of itself any ' 
proof of Rome's decay. After Caracalla, 212, if they were subjects they 
were Romans, wherever born. Yet Syrian, Egyptian or DaciaiT soldiers 
would certainly be far less likely to have or to retain Roman patriotism 
than those born in Italy, 

§ 5 Poverty 

Mommsen, IV, x. Guizot, Civilization in France, Lect. ii, vii. Duruy, Moyen Age^ 
I, i. Blanqui, Hist, of Pol. Economy, vi-x. Bureau de la Malle, Ec on. politique 
des romains, 2 v. Savigny, Romisches Recht im Mittelalter, I, ch. ii. 

This had other and larger sources : i Slave^ labor, 
making free disgraceful. 2 Donations to the populace 
for bread and shows. 3 Expense of the gorgeous impe- 
rial court, doubled after Theodosius.^ 4 Gifts to the 
church by emperors and by private persons. 5 With- 
drawal of soldiers and monks from the producing class. 
6 The burdens and bad incidence of taxes, especially 
from the time of Constantine.^ It was in fiscal matters 
that Roman administration was least wise : it not only 
taxed needlessly, for favorites, actors, gladiators, lar- 
gesses and the like, but at the same time discouraged, 
production or closed its avenues. Select classes of 
persons were exempted from public dues, customs were 
oppressive and irregular, the taxed were crushed utterly. 
The result, a fatal one, was the erasure of all middle 
class from the population.* Each body of curials was 
held responsible for the revenues from its district. A 
curial could alienate only by permission, lost one-fourth 
by marrying a non-curial, if heirless could bequeath but 
a fourth. Curials in numbers sought the army and the 
priesthood, but fresh laws were passed to chain them. 
Many turned coloni ; some, robbers. Wealth became 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 10/ 

massed in few hands. The great enjoyed their carriages 
of solid silver, golden villas and palaces and leagues of 
beautiful parks. Farms often covered five hundred 
square miles, being tilled on shares by coloni, a class 
constantly recruited from the poor free, who rushed 
countryward on the failure of bread-donations in town. 
Yet scarcely a quarter of former crops was obtained. 
Through many tracts that had earlier been as gardens, 
one could travel for days without seeing, a human dwell- 
ing. A third of Africa and two-thirds of rich Campania 
were without an inhabitant. Wide reaches of Umbria 
and Etruria were grown up with briers and pastured by 
swine.^ 

1 On Roman slavery see Gibbon, ch. ii, with Guizot's and Milman's 
notes, also in Lea's Studies, and Mommsen as at next §. Secretan thinks 
this about the sole cause of Rome's ruin — feodalite, 37 sqq., a fine discus- 
sion, 

2 Who restored to the West [but not to the city of Rome] the honor of 
imperial residence. Honorius, his younger son, was to have his seat at 
Milan, Arcadius, the elder, his at Constantinople. — Gibbon, xxix. Upon 
the approach of Radagaisus, Honorius removes to Ravenna, which hence- 
forward remains the imperial centre for the West. 

^ Political disorder might be mentioned as a seventh source, but it be- 
came prominent too late to be of great consequence. During all the proud 
time of the empire property was as safe and justice between man and man 
as swift and sure as they have been in any period of history. 

* On the wretchedness of the later curials, Savigny, Guizot and Duruy 
as above. Savigny prefers the word ' decurion ' \_decurio — perhaps from 
decern and so = tithing-man or tunginus, or better, from de and curia^ 
*one of the curia'], Duruy, p, 22, briefly states the main features of the 
imperial tax system. The principal tax was upon land, the ' indiction ' 
whose rate Constantine, or, according to Mommsen, Hadrian, fixed as once 
in 15 years [cycle of indictions]. Earlier the period had been 5, and in 
Egypt I. Even now there were frequent and unheralded ' superindictions.' 
— Mommsen [in Rom. Alterthiimer, V], Staatsrecht, II, 945, where he 
suggests the Egyptian origin of the 15-year period. Elagabalus enforced 



I08 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

taxes in gold, his government paying its dues in debased silver at nominal 
value, which recipients had to use at its real value in purchasing their gold. 
Customs-duties were not protective in nature but numerous and high. The 
same article would often be tolled a dozen times. This grinding to death 
of the middle class harmed the empire more than all the ravages of the 
barbarians. 

^ See Essay i in v. Sybel's Kleine hist. Schrifien, I. 

§ 6 Occult Influences 

Mommsen, III, xii; V, xi. Jacob, Production and Consumption of Precious Metals, 
vii-x. Gamier, Histoire de la vionnaie, II, xvi-xx. Bureau de la Malle, as at 
§ 5. Blanqui, as at § 5, vii, viii, xxiv. 

Certain ultimate causes of Rome's decay lay very 
deep. Not indolence nor alone gratuities of corn or 
any form of maladministration begot the widespread 
wretchedness above described. Rome's peculiar history 
had kept from her the secret of wealth-production, and 
so soon as no rich lands remained to conquer, her re- 
sources began hopelessly to shrink.^ In Italy and the 
regions about Constantinople long importation of food, 
partly enforced and partly natural, had induced desue- 
tude of agriculture. Land was cheapened and thus 
massed in latifundia, the absolute form of tenure which 
centuries of Roman land-law development had produced, 
placing it, when donations failed and it was again valu- 
able for cultivation, beyond reach of the poor. The 
bane was aggravated by the lex Claudia^ forbidding sena- 
torial houses to engage in commerce. They invested in 
land, worked by slaves on a large scale. The peasants 
were reduced to coloni, serfs, only better than slaves.^ 
Still deadlier to industry was the slow rarefaction of 
money and the consequent fall of prices that set in 
early in the history of the empire. The product of 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME lOQ 

the mines fell off, ceasing by 476, and the influx of pre- 
cious metal from remote parts ended along with con- 
quest, the stock in the form of wares and trinkets being 
at the same time too small to spare much for coinage. 
A vast amount of coin was exported in return for luxu- 
ries. Paper money was unknown. The purchasing 
power of gold and silver rose, that of other things fell. 
Instead of being productively used, money was hoarded.^ 
Both this and the massing of land became worse evils, 
of course, with increase of political disorder. 

1 * You would be rich,' said Julian to his mutinous army, ' then let us 
march upon Persia. For the riches of Rome are no more, her cities in 
ruins, provinces desolate, treasury exhausted, — all owing to those who per- 
suaded our princes to purchase peace from the barbarians.^ 

2 Pliny said, latifundia perdidere Italiam. They caused poverty not 
only directly, but also through great reduction of population, since with 
the advance of slavery the family relation was ignored. The lex Claudia 
passed just before v.c. 536, B.C., 218. The ancient world had no manu- 
factories of the modern kind, only immense private shops with slave-arti- 
sans. Nor any great industrial cities like Lowell or Fall River, or any 
commercial like Liverpool, Hamburg or New York, Vespasian and Titus 
ended use by the poor of the common lands. Being unable to live wholly 
from their small farms, they incurred mortgage debts on these, which fewer 
and fewer could pay. Thus not only did petty estates pass into latifundia 
but the old owners had no resource but to work these for the purchasers, 
for i or ^ the crop. Such coloni at first commonly rented for 5 years, but 
the same causes that had made them tenants inclined them to wish leases 
to be as long as they could secure. Leases came to be made for 100 years 
and hereditary. Some were perpetual. Thus men who had been free 
became chained to the soil, so that at last only marriage outwardly marked 
a colonus from a slave. Really there was always this other difference that 
the serf could not legally be torn from his land or forced to pay more than 
the stipulated share for its usufruct. This description applies best to Italy 
and Gaul. — Leo, Gesch. d. Mittelalters, Bd. i, 22 sqq.; Guizot, Civilization 
in France, vii; Thierry, Third Estate, ch. i. 

3 For the industrial asphyxia resulting from falling prices, see F. A. 
Walker, Money. 



no THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

§ 7 Lack of Unity . 

Guizot, Essais sur Vhistoire de France, i. 

Rome could incorporate nations, but ' in the absence of 
those vast and frequent relations which give men com- 
munity of ideas and reciprocity of interests,' ^ could not 
assimilate or unify them, so many and distant were they 
and so poor the then means of communication. In spite 
of best endeavors to this end, the empire never became 
a living organism. Rather was it to the last an agglom- 
eration of peoples who, however much they rejoiced in 
the Roman name, citizenship and ' peace,' had no concert 
of political feeling or action. No one man could in 
troubled times, or properly in tranquil, direct imperial 
affairs. Society lacked chemical not less than mechan- 
ical homogeneity. Dire evils in this regard were : i The 
prevalence of guilds.^ 2 Dichotomy of society into aris- 
tocracy and actual or virtual slaves,^ antipodal ranks, in 
deadly mutual hostility, both totally destitute of patriot- 
ism. 3 The most fatal internal cause of Rome's disin- 
tegration : separation between municipal and general- 
political interests and rights. Officers of government, 
a close corporation, cared only for the general ; all other 
citizens, the great mass, only for the local, the municipal, 
a condition of things proved by history inconsistent with 
either a free state or a strong.* 

1 Guizot. Such unity, he adds, ' may be for a time effected by compul- 
sion or by the ascendancy of some superior man, but such forces are not per- 
manent. No state can be permanent unless its roots and causes are in 
society itself, in the physical and moral relations of the men who compose 
it.' Hence broke up Karl the Great's empire and that of his perhaps more 
powerful contemporary, Haroun Alraschid. The efforts of Diocletian and 
Constantine, and again of Theodosius, to divide the imperial headship 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME III 

between different parts of the empire did little good, perhaps on the whole 
aggravated the evil they were meant to check, — Thierry, Tableau, 193. 
Practically, the Roman world was larger than the entire globe to-day. 
Cf. Curtius's Rede [1881], Reichsbildungen im kl. AUherthum. 

2 On guilds, Thierry, Tableati, 201; Duruy, Moyen Age, 23. 

3 Virtual slaves, see last §, n. 2; actual, § 5, n. I. The body of the 
Roman people would be now i) the poorest curials, ii) the coloni or serfs, 
and iii) the slaves proper. — Duruy, 21 sqq. 

* Says Guizot, further : Pour que le droit existe s^rement quelque part 
il faut quHl existe partotit ; qtie sa presence ati centre est vaine sHl n'est 
present aussi dans les localites ; que sans les libertes politiques il ny a 
point de libertes municipales solides, et reciproquemejit. — p. 46 of the vol. 
named above. Guizot never improved upon these old essays. His am- 
pler lectures merely popularize them. Essay i illustrates the doctrine from 
modern history. The third estate early secured influence in the French 
communes [see Ch. VI] ; but having, in spite of those centuries of effort, 
beginning with the 13th, secured no powers of a general political nature, 
it obtained no liberty. Cf. Maine, Anc. Law, 347. 

§ 8 The Primitive Germans 

See bibliog. to this Chapter, at end. Mommsen, Bk. VIII, iv. Thierry, Tableau,V\, i. 
Sheppard, iii-viii. 

Yet Rome might have stood long, perhaps, by incor- 
porating new elements of life, even till now, but for the 
inroads of the barbarians. Between these and the em- 
pire, the Rhine, the Danube and the Roman wall had till 
nearly a.d. 375 formed an efficient dividing line. Three 
great belts of peoples dwelt beyond, (i) farthest north 
and east certain non-Aryan ^ tribes, (ii) nearest them 
some Slavic, (iii) skirting the empire, leaders in attacks, 
the Germans.^ History first hears of the Germans about 
320 B.c.^ Their contact with Rome begins 113 b.c, the 
date of their victory over the consul Cn. Carbo at Noreia. 
It continues through the periods (i) of Roman superior- 
ity, to the defeat of Varus,* 9 a.d., (2) of equilibrium, to 



112 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

the death of Aurelius, i8o, (3) of German superiority, to 
375, (4) of the founding of German kingdoms in the 
empire, to 568. Ever after Marius crushes the Cimbri,^ 
10 1 B.C., are hordes of Germans on Roman soil, at length 
forming an important element in the population, (a) as 
slaves, (b) as coloni, (c) as legionary soldiers, (d) as laeti, 
(e) as auxiliaries, (f) as hostages, (g) as individual adven- 
turers. Many of the last obtained high Roman offices, 
civil and military.^ Till the fourth century Germans 
settled in the empire as Romans ; thenceforward most 
retained a pronounced German feeling. From 375, 
which is therefore an epoch, the invaders brought ideas 
of German preponderance and conquest. The springs 
to German emigration were mainly tribal feuds, over- 
population combined with indolence and ignorance of 
agriculture, and pressure from non-Germanic peoples.'' 

1 I.e., Lapps, Finns and Huns. See Freeman, Hist'i. Geog., i, § 3. 
Cohausen has a work entitled Der romische Grenzwall, full of informa- 
tion on the northern Hne of the empire. 

2 See map. Shortly before the great migration, the East Goths [Os- 
trogoths] held southern Russia, the West Goths [Visigoths] eastern 
Hungary and Roumania, the Vandals southwestern Hungary, the Sueves 
Moravia, Bohemia and Bavaria, the Alamans Wurtemberg and Baden, the 
Burgundians from the Neckar to the Main, the Ripuarian Franks both 
banks of the Rhine about Cologne, the Salian Franks the Rhine-mouths, 
the Saxons the lower Elbe, the Lombards higher up this river to the 
southeast, the Thuringians its southern head-waters. The Alans, aside 
from the Huns nearly the sole non-Teutonic invaders, came from the 
lower Volga. 

3 From Pytheas of Marseilles, who made a voyage of discovery north- 
ward along the Atlantic coast. He did not go far inland. The name 
' Germani ' appears first in Caesar, who uses it as a collective term. The 
people themselves had then no common title. Waitz, Verfassungsgesch., 
bd. i, 23 sq., discusses the point at length. He thinks * Germani ' of 
Celtic origin and Tacitus right in his view of it as at first the designa- 



ll 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME II3 

tion of a tribe, applied generically by Caesar. ' Deutsch ' or * Teutsch ' 
[=' Teuton'?] was first used about 813, signifying 'domestic' as con- 
trasted with Latin. It meant primarily the language, and soon the 
collective people, Saxons, Suabians, etc., revealing the growth of German 
national feeling. The term occurs first in an Itahan document. As to 
the etymological meaning of ' German ' or of * Deutsch ' [' Teuton '] only 
guesses have been offered. 

* Merivale, xxxviii, interestingly recounts this sad story. So does 
Kaufmann, Deutsche Gesch., I, ii. 

^ Mommsen, vol. iii, 217, also v. Sybel, regards these people as un- 
doubtedly Germans. The battle of loi, so fatal to the Cimbri, was at 
Vercelli, in No. Italy. That of 102, at Aix, in France, was with the Am- 
brones and Teutons. — Mommsen, vol. iii, 232. 

^ Such as Stilicho and Arminius, the one a Vandal, the other chief of 
the Cherusci. Arminius had the Roman civitas. Maroboduus was a 
Sueve. He came to Rome young, as a hostage. Augustus liked him and 
gave him a liberal education. Theodoric the great Ostrogoth spent years 
at Constantinople as a hostage, was then Zeno's ally, i.e., commanded a 
Gothic army under Zeno, and at last, becoming formidable, was sent to 
make Italy his kingdom, snatching it from Odoacer. Ricimer, the distin- 
guished lieutenant of Aetius under Valentinian III [424-450], was a 
Sueve. 

■^ Thus the cause for the decisive incursion of the Goths, 375, though 
Ranke inclines to question this, was an overwhelming onset by Huns. 
The descent of Sueves, Alans and Vandals upon Gaul and Spain, 406-407, 
was also to escape Huns. Mere love of adventure or of plunder probably 
had less to do with these movements than has been supposed. 



§ 9 Their Culture 

Gibbon, chaps, ix, x. Guizot, Civilization in France, Lect. v, vii. Green, H. of Eng. 
People, chaps, i, ii. Tacihis', Germania. Arnold, Urzeit, Nitzsch, I, i, ii. 
Maine, Village Communities [see lit. at p. 398]. vo7i Sybel in A7. hist. Schriften, L 

As pictured by Tacitus the Germans were taking the 
first steps in civilization. Their susceptibiHty therefor 
was great, progress rapid. At the time of the migration 
the Goths especially had considerable culture though as 
yet no writing.^ Significant that among the northern 



114 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

nations Germans alone founded kingdoms in the empire. 
German social, judicial, economic, and administrative 
arrangements are each noteworthy,^ also their personal 
bravery and dislike of city life. The German trait most 
weighty for history as well as most anti-Roman was 
individualism, seen : i In private relations. If females 
and slaves were chattels, the free man was, in his per- 
son and his domicile, almost above law. Yet family and 
clan were important. 2 Politically. There was never 
a pan-Germanic nation or even federation, and loyalty to 
government was scarcely conceived. Nations divided, 
clans and individuals seceded, on the slightest provoca- 
tion. Nothing was commoner than joining a foe to fight 
one's own nation and kin.^ 

1 There was no German alphabet till the Moesogothic of Ulfilas, who 
died 388. > It bore this name because first used by the Goths in Moesia, 
whither no Goths came till about 250. The runes were not letters, though 
perhaps utilized by Ulfilas in forming his alphabet. 

2 We can only touch this entertaining theme, referring for ampler treat- 
ment to the works named above and at end of bibliog. to this Ch., esp. to 
Waitz, Sohm, Arnold and Kaufmann. Best brief account, wholly trust- 
worthy, is in chaps, ii and iii of Stubbs's Const. Hist, of England. The 
social classes were nobles, free, freedmen, serfs and slaves. Nobles 
received respect but had no extra political rights. Women were greatly 
honored but without rights. Slaves were prisoners of war, criminals or 
self-sold through gambling. They had no rights but were well treated. 
All the free participated in the land, in war, and in the conduct of political 
affairs. The general assembly of the free, in every tribe, each new and full 
moon, decided all things, being legislature, court, and executive. Special 
leaders, Herzoge, not necessarily nobles, were selected for war, and prin- 
cipes to preside in the assembly and to execute its behests. A murderer 
could compound with the dead man's family by paying IVehrgeld. If he 
did not do this, personal vengeance, Blutrache, against him was not only 
legal but a duty resting on the family [^Fehderecht~\. Obdurate peace- 
breakers were outlawed, declared vogelfrei. As among primitive Indo- 
Europeans everywhere, land was held in common [the Mark-System], 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME II5 

house-lots and gardens alone excepted, and in Coesar's time the cultivating 
communities of each tribe were made to interchange localities yearly. The 
practice had ceased when Tacitus wrote, but the arable lots of each Mark- 
community still changed occupants yearly in rotation. These Mark-groups 
seem to have been the fragments into which broke up those clans which all 
over the Indo-European world succeeded primeval patriarchalism. A 
French law of 574 first made children instead of clansmen heirs to one 
deceased. Stubbs, ch. iii, is the best brief account of the Mark-system. 
For a fuller, Schaeffle, Batt u. Leben d. socialen K'drpers, iii, 410 sqq. To 
the stone and brass implements of an earlier day iron had been added by 
the time of the migrations. No metal money till contact with Romans. 
Cattle and grain raising were the chief pursuits, the work being done by 
women and unfree men. There were no cities and in Caesar's time no 
fixed villages. Their grains were oats, barley and wheat, besides which 
they raised vegetables and flax. They had horses, cattle, sheep, swine and 
geese, but took no pains in breeding these as they did to improve their 
dogs and hawks for hunting. Stags were sometimes tamed for the chase, 
sometimes harnessed to wagons. Ross, Early H. of Land-holding among 
the Germans, learnedly argues against the above, that the primitive histori- 
cal Mark-group consisted of slaves, that hence individual, or feudal, pro- 
prietorship in land already subsisted. The view is ridiculed by Maine and 
has found acceptance nowhere. H. B. Adams discusses in a brochure the 
* Germanic Origin of the N. E. Town.' The phrase misleads. Our town 
is most significantly related to the German village but not in the way of 
historical continuity. See Ch. II, § 5, n. I. 

^ Hence nearly all the nations were mixtures of many tribes. Marobod- 
uus and Theodoric both tried to form a general German confederacy but 
found it impossible. 



§ ID Their Constitution 

von Sybel, Entstehung d. d. Konigthums. Dahn, Konige d. Gertnanen. Waz'tz, 
Verfassungsgesch., I. Fiske, American Pol. Ideas, ii. 

The question has been much discussed whether Ger- 
many before the invasions at all possessed proper politi- 
cal as distinguished from patriarchal institutions. Von 
Sybel, on the basis of strong statements in Caesar and 
Tacitus, earnestly maintains the negative. They lived, 



Il6 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

he thinks, in half-nomadic clans, making their military 
excursions under mere chiefs of bands, who only in 
rarest cases deserved or received the kingly title, and 
developing even the beginnings of true states only as 
trained by the Romans. With this view French writers 
generally agree. Most Germans, however, like Waitz, 
refer the German state, with the veritably political ele- 
ments of king, army and judiciary, to purely German 
times. The truth seems to lie between the two views, 
yet substantially more with von Sybel.^ The clan and 
its judge or princeps must have had a quasi-public 
authority so early as Caesar, although there were then 
no proper kings ; but Tacitus speaks of German kings, 
distinct from duces ^ and principes, and later such refer- 
ences are common. On the other hand, considering 
Caesar's words, the proverbially brittle character of Ger- 
man political society, the weakness of kingship among 
the Germans when it does appear, and the existence 
still of democratic tribes, we cannot account Teutonic 
royalty at least, older than our era. 

1 Caesar, Gallic War, VI, 23, says expressly : In pace nulhis est com- 
munis magistrahis, sed principes regionum et pagorum [i.e., of tribes and 
of villages] inter suos ius dicunt, controversiasque minuunt. He also 
says : Qtutm bellum civitas aut inlatum defendit aut infert, magistratus 
qui eo bello praesint, nt vitae necisque habeant potestatem, deliguntur. 
Ccesar got his information from the Gauls, who would have known of 
German kings had such existed. He [Gallic W. I, 35] calls Ariovistus 
* rex ' but evidently only honoris causa, as named so by the Roman senate. 
We cannot tell how far back Roman influence in Germany began. Ario- 
vistus at 58 B.C., was well acquainted with affairs at Rome [Gallic W. I, 45] 
and somehow received tidings thence scarcely less promptly than Caesar. 
Such facility of communication did not grow up in a day. The Oermans' 
glory is not to have had little to learn from Rome but to have learned so 
much and with such aptitude. Fustel de Coulanges [Rev. d. d. Mondes, 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 11/ 

15 Mai, 1872] goes much farther than v. Sybel, considering the Germans 
even at the time of their entrance into the empire httle better than savages, 
like Attila's bloodthirsty mob a few years after, and denying that they made 
to the civilization of Europe a single original contribution, political or 
other. This is the French extreme. Yet Sir H. Maine, Pop. Govt., 3, 
presents nearly the same view. 

2 J^eges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumujtt. — Germania, c. 7. On 
this passage, Roth, Beneficiahvesett, 2. Jordanis makes Valentinian III, 
in 451, send to the Visigoths and to their 'king.' Fredegar speaks of 
' king Chlodovech and his Franks.' Kingship did not involve command 
of the host, or an especially efficient authority, or the non-necessity of elec- 
tion. Kings in fact differed from principes in little except that heredity 
was observed in their election, each being elected from the same family as 
his predecessor, which came to be known with time as the royal family, 
elevated above other noble families. 



§ II Their Military System 

Freeman, Growth of Eng. Constitution, 40 sqq. Stubbs, ch. ii. von Sybel, Entstehung, 

ii, § 7- 

With the Germans, army and people were identical 
conceptions, every freeman being a brave. The Herzog, 
specially chosen for his valor, led forth two kinds of 
public forces proper : the elite infantry, consisting of 
the 100 champion fighters from ^2iQh. pagtis, and the gen- 
eral body of freemen, arranged by families. They fought 
in wedge form, without reserves, bearing shields, spears, 
bows, clubs, hammers and battle-axes. Swords and coats 
of mail were late. But perhaps the chief source of Ger- 
man efficiency in war was the comitattis-vi\^\SX.\x\\.ovL} a 
system of land-privateers or bands of professional war- 
riors. Each man of sufficient means and fame for valor 
had, or might have, his company, his family, of these 
military comrade-followers, free, sleeping at his hearth 
or his camp-fire, receiving from him living and accoutre- 



Il8 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

ments, and voluntarily bound to accompany him in war, 
into the thickest of the battle, to conquer or die with 
him, but never retreat. The tie could be dissolved at 
pleasure, only not in face of the foe. The flower of the 
German youth were to be found in the comitatus ; many 
spent so their entire lives. 

1 This is especially important to an understanding of feudalism. See 
Ch. VI, § 4. Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, XXX, iii, iv, sees in the 
German comitatus and its chief, feudal vassals and their suzerain already- 
present; upon which Guizot neatly remarks: il e-Cit du se borner h les 
prevoir [He should, instead of seeing, merely have y2?r^-seen]. The coni' 
ites, as members of the comitatus were called, were usually mounted, per- 
haps always, though often dismounting in fight. On the death of a comes 
his military outfit returned to his princeps or chief, a custom leading to the 
* heriot ' of English feudalism. See the author's Inst, of Constitutional 
Hist. I, § 3, 4. 

§ 12 Their Religion 

Grimm, Teutonic Mythology. Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations. Milman, III, 
ii. Freytag, Bilder aus d. deutsche7i Vergangefiheit,\,i,. y^/^rz^a/^, Continental 
Teutons [in Conv'n of the West]. 

The Germans were deeply religious, yet for pagans 
little superstitious. Their priesthood was too weak to 
tyrannize, their investment of natural forces with divin- 
ity poetic rather than theological. The supreme Power, 
conceived by other Aryan heathen as light, sky or sun, 
they worshipped as the Good, a moral being, 'Gott,' 
' God,' this word existing without an article in all the 
primitive dialects. Owing in part to their lofty and 
ethical^ notion of the godhead, the Christian faith 
found here readier acceptance than among any heathen 
elsewhere. Other reasons concurred. Worship was held 
in groves instead of temples, originally and to the last 
mainly, without idols. No monumental art, as in" Greece 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME II9 

and Rome, reminded converts of their ancestral rites. 
Woden, Donar and Ziu furnished a schema helpful to 
faith in the Trinity.^ With the ideas of retribution, 
vicarious sacrifice and a future destruction of the world 
by fire the Germans had long been familiar. They elected 
to ofiice, as the church its bishops, were given to hos- 
pitality, and had a species of eucharistic observance for 
keeping fresh the memory of the departed. Donar was 
in some localities the prototype of Peter,^ in others of 
Judas. 

1 Yet the Germans on occasion offered human sacrifices, prisoners and 
slaves being sold for this purpose so late as the 8th century. The Irminsul 
appears not to have been an idol. — Milman, vol. ii, 476. Clotilda begs 
Chlodovech to * neglect idols,' but may have meant only an injunction to 
renounce his heathen rites. 

2 Besides names for the days of the vv^eek [exc. Saturday], this northern 
paganism contributed to Christendom the Christmas tree, successor to the 
sacred Yule tree of our German ancestors, which the early missionaries 
denounced and made every convert cut in pieces. Celts, Romans and 
Slavs knew nothing of it. With the Scandinavians and probably the 
Angles and Jutes the ash, in central Germany the pine, was the conse- 
crated tree. The Edda makes Ygdrasil or the world-tree an ash. 

2 Riehl has it that upon very many old seats of the Donar-cult, hills 
always, churches of St. Peter were erected and churches of St. Peter still 
stand. 

§ 13 The Mixture 

Gziz'zot, Civilization in France, esp. Lect. v, vii, viii. Stille, ii, iii. Kaufmann, 
Deutsche Gesch., II. Blufiqui, H. of Pol. Econ. x. Milman, as at § 12. Giese- 
brecht, bk. i. 

The Germans came seeking homes, hence though as 
victors, not as destroyers. Imperial domains, probably 
too all unclaimed lands, passed to the kings, to be by 
them utilized directly or let as fiefs. Subjects were 
provided for by appropriating private lands. This pro- 



120 • THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

cess was various in different kingdoms. In Britain and 
proconsular Africa/ owners were totally dispossessed. 
The Ostrogoths took one-third, the Burgundians first 
one-half, then two-thirds, the Visigoths two-thirds, the 
Franks none till south of the Loire.^ The Vandals, 
Franks and Saxons made the seizure with violence ; 
the Goths- and Burgundians under forms of the ius 
hospitale? In some districts the two peoples were 
thoroughly amalgamated, in others, formed alternate 
communities, elsewhere one or the other failed. Urban 
populations, long remained almost solely Roman. All 
these conditions found place in France alone. Local 
government, diocesan, provincial or municipal, went on 
in many places long after all connection with the im- 
perial capital had ceased, ^gidius and his son, Syag- 
rius,^ kept Roman authority in exercise between the 
Somme and the Loire till 486. Establishment of bar- 
barian administration did not at once displace Roman, 
but the two prevailed together. Confusion of national- 
ity was greatest in France, where the old was not pure 
Roman, the new not pure German. While the culti- 
vated Gallo-Romans everywhere used Latin, about 500, 
Saxon was to be heard at Bayeux, Tartar in part of 
Poitou, Celtic ^ in Armorica and among the old peasantry 
elsewhere, Alan at Orleans, Frankish at Tournai, Gothic 
at Tours and throughout the south.^ 

1 I.e., the province of Africa, nearly comcident with the old kingdom 
of Carthage. The Vandals clustered here, for the purpose of mutual 
assistance. ElseM'here in Africa Romans kept much. 

2 Because public lands sufficed. When they crossed the Loire and 
drove hence the Visigoths, they appropriated private as well as public. 
Chlodovech's earliest conquests seem not to have been attended with a 
very great influx of Franks. — Roth, Beneficialwesen, 63. 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 121 

^ lus hospiiale was a Roman administrative arrangement for quartering 
auxiliary forces upon the people. Both the great Gothic nations entered 
the empire as auxiliaries. 

* Gregory of Tours speaks of Syagrius as ' king of the Romans.' His 
capital was Soissons. 

^ The western part of Armorica took the name Brittany from the hordes 
of British Celts who settled there during the latter half of the 5th century, 
having been driven from Britain by the invading Saxons. 

^ Besides, the Franks themselves were a composite people, a confeder- 
acy of tribes that gradually blended. Clovis at Tournai was only one of 
several petty Frankish kings. By combined force and guile he soon sub- 
jected the others. 

§ 14 Disparity and Conflict 

Milman, as at § 12. Guizot, Lect. vii. Kan/manti and Blanqui, as at § 13. Freytag, 
Bilder, I, 2 and 3. 

Social order came slowly. Some four million Ger- 
mans had settled in a population of from five to ten 
times their number.^ Save in France, the peoples dif- 
fered in religion. 2 Each, proud for its own reasons, 
despised the other. In the Romans of Gaul and Africa, 
fierce hate was added. They had much cause. ^ At 
first and for a considerable time, they alone were taxed ; 
the Germans alone bore arms. Courts, in German hands, 
favored Germans. The Wehrgeld^ of a Frank was twice 
that of a Roman. A Roman, for illegally seizing and 
binding a Frank, had to pay twice the penalty required 
of the Frank for the same offence to him. The Ostro- 
goths and Burgundians did not so distinguish. Rich 
Romans, also such as entered the Heerbann, speedily 
bettered their condition. Poor Germans, on the other 
hand, by the same process as poor Romans earlier,^ soon 
became virtual serfs. Besides ignorance, the system of 
fines and of military service specially contributed to 



122 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

such poverty.^ In what proportion Roman elements 
prevailed in the new social fabric is still a question. 
In general, Roman influences dominated language, 
agriculture, the mechanic arts, business arrangements, 
contracts, and the like, also all municipal affairs, 
and all intellectual and ecclesiastical life ; while mili- 
tary and civil, including judicial, administration became 
Germanic. By this latter means, in great part, the 
Germanic idea of personal liberty has pervaded Europe 
and America, modifying every modern law and con- 
stitution.^ 

1 This is Kaufmann's estimate. It embraces Franks, Vandals, Burgun- 
dians and both families of the Goths. 

2 The statement reckons Burgundians as Franks. These alone of the 
Germanic kingdoms had become catholic. The others, so far as con- 
verted, were Arians. See § 17. 

3 On the German treatment of the Romans, by whom, of course, all 
the old subjects of the empire are meant, evidence seems conflicting, per- 
haps because we cannot exactly date our data. Roth thinks that even in 
France it was good from the first. Fustel de Coulanges makes note of a 
jury, as it virtually was, which in these troubled times consisted of 4 Goths, 
3 Franks, and 1 1 Romans, sitting side by side and pronouncing sentence 
according to the personal law of the defendant. He believes that the 
extra Wehrgeld law was local or quite temporary in its action. It is 
certain that Theodoric's government used partiality not against Romans 
but rather for them, and that race hostility even in France was mostly 
gone by end of 6th century. The example of the Burgundians, who ad- 
mitted the old population to equal rights with themselves, influenced the 
Franks. Gregory of Tours represents, about 590, Romans in the highest 
social class, even in the king's service, and honored with a Wehrgeld of 
300 solidi. ' Lombard ' came to mean any, Romans included, who fought 
and held land. 

* * Ward-off- money.' — See § 9, n. 2. Of a murdered Frank, if a land- 
holder, it was 200 solidi, if landless, lOO; of a Roman, if a land-possessor, 
100, if not, 45. The solidus is thought to have been worth at this time 
about ^4.50. 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 12$ 

5 See § 6, n. 2. 

^ On lines, see n. 4, and Kaufmann, II, 209. They were affixed to all 
sorts of misdemeanors, always terribly high. The Salic law fines the theft 
of a knife 15 solidi, that of the iron parts of a mill, 45. But these enor- 
mous mulcts are partly explained by the exceeding scarcity of iron. Mili- 
tary service impoverished in that the Heerbann was called out incessantly, 
often in seed-time, often in mid-harvest, leaving crops to rot. 

■^ German shaped Romance speech but little, and mostly in Italy. Cf. 
Yt. goitfalone [flag], and gonfalonier e fr. German Gundfano ; marchese 
[Fr. and Eng. ttiarqiiis'] fr. Marca ; scabino [a justice: Fr. echevin'] fr. 
Schoeffe ; mondualdo [guardian] fr. Mtindwald ; the words * France,' 
' French,' ' Lombardy,' ' Lombards,' ' Alleviagne ' and * allemand^ But 
the Italians say ' Gerjuania,^ though ' Tedesco ' is It. for * Tentsch^ 
Spanish dalera fr. Thaler. Guadagnare, to gain, is fr. old high Germ. 
weidanjan. The most interesting example is bourgeois [burgess, borough, 
etc.] fr. Biirger. The Germans had no word for civis because no cities. 
To translate it they coined Biirger from Burg, a stronghold. Borgo, 
name for the locality of the Vatican at Rome, may have first been * Burg^ 
called so by German pilgrims. It. * bando ' =: our * ban,' may be fr. Ger. 
Bann. 

§ 15 Constitutional Results 

von Schulte, Reichs- u. Rechts-geschichte , 89 sqq. Soh^n, Retchs- u. Rechtsver- 
fassung. Fustel de Coulanges, Hist, des Inst, politiques de V aticienne Frattce. 

Two changes consequent upon the mixture were spe- 
cially momentous : i The king assumed a new charac- 
ter, becoming hereditary and practically absolute. In 
the confusion incident to settlement he was left to decide 
many questions normally under the jurisdiction of the 
assembly. This became precedent. Further, to the 
Romans he took the emperor's place, which both greatly 
elevated German ideas of kingship and gave the king 
immense influence in ecclesiastical affairs.^ 2 To the 
old nobility of blood succeeded a new, based on relation 
to the king. Its ranks varied a little with nations. In 
France, each province had its ' Graf,' comes or count, and 



124 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

its ' hundreds ' with their * centenaries/ the Graf being 
both judge and administrator. Over Grafs stood ^Her- 
zoge^ duces or dukes, each representing the king for 
several provinces.^ The two higher of these functions, 
passing exactly as in the later empire, through the stages 
of service, ordinary office and hereditary office, became 
the mere marks of nobility. Other changes were : (i) 
increasing insignificance and desuetude of the popular 
assembly,^ (2) degradation of the comitatus from com- 
panions to dependents,^ (3) assumption of territorial re- 
lations by the government,^ (4) alleviation of slavery.^ 

1 Thus the king called councils and exercised general oversight over 
the church. 

2 The titles ' duke ' and ' count ' have been in constant use ever since 
old-Roman days. In Constantine's time ' count,' comes or companion was 
a mere name of respect, bestowed on many chcces or military commanders 
and on almost all other officers, whether civil or military. It denoted no 
special rank, yet must have become in some sense higher than dux, since 
it grew to be the official term for addressing the duces who bore it. A 
military comes, i.e., was higher than a mere dux. The stormy experiences 
of early Frankish settlement naturally gave to the military function, and 
hence to the military name, the greater exaltation. Besides, there is some 
evidence that these offices had old Frankish originals, and were not mere 
continuations of the Roman. Especially would the word 'Graf indicate 
this, being new and non-Latin. * Province ' [= ' Gati '] is here used not 
in the crisp sense of Constantine's day, yet the old-Roman governmental 
organization evidently helped furnish the pattern for this. Centenaries 
were the Graf's executive officers. The Herzog's position did not pre- 
vent his having a Graf's jiirisdictio over the immediate locality of his 
residence. Also the Graf had a certain degree of military authority, 
and the Alarkgraf, comes limitis or count of the border, possessed it as 
fully as a Herzog. In Thuringia and other distant parts dukes were prac- 
tically independent till Karl Great humbled them. 

2 Never entirely disused. So the champs de Alars, and later, through 
change of calendar, the champs de Mai, under the Merovingian house. 
But these were never truly popular, like those of barbaric days, nor ever 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 12$ 

decisive like those, being at most only concurrent in authority with the 
will of the king. Noteworthy is the assembly at Soissons in 752, which 
elects Pippin III king [§ 18], swearing under pain of excommunication 
never to elect a king not sprung from his loins. We see by this that the 
idea of election in connection with kingship had not perished. From 
about 575 the un-Germanic custom of crowning kings and queens was 
observed. 

* Naturally when the chief settled down to agriculture his followers 
became his tenants, some for better, others for worse. 

^ None of the barbarian kings had been strictly kings of lands but of 
peoples. Theodoric, e.g., was not king of Italy but of the East Goths. — 
Freeman, Hist'l Geog., 96. The peace was the * king's peace.' Law was 
not the ' law of the land ' but the law of the tribe. 

6 Slave importation ceasing, slaves became more valuable and were 
treated better. 

§ 16 The Culmination 

Guizot, Civilization in Europe, ii, iii, v, vi. 

The Roman empire at its best presents a spectacle of 
an absolute state, of order without freedom. ^ By 500, its 
order has succumbed to disorder, which is already dire 
and threatens fearful increase. New kingdoms are as 
yet infirm. Orthodox, Arian and heathen, often really 
varying in little save name, are perpetually in fierce 
mutual strife. German individualism, as of old, defies 
rule of law, encouraged now in this perversity by two 
doctrines intrinsically good, learned from the church, (i) 
that of the right, still recognized at least in theory, of 
the people to take part in electing bishops, (2) that of 
conscience ^ as an authority superior to all human. Thus 
has begun that mighty anarchic movement destined to 
culminate at length in feudalism, the negation of both 
order and freedom. But, efficient relic of Roman civi- 
lization, a powerful tendency toward centralization is 
already at work in both church and state, certain to pro- 



126 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

duce immense results in time. A synthesis is beginning 
between the two conflicting tendencies, which, though 
it will first, to good purpose, renew absolute monarchy 
both ecclesiastical and political, will finally evoke the 
constitutional state, assuring order and freedom to- 
gether. The healthy crystallization begins with the 
rise of the Prankish kingdom. 

1 Observe that it is no contradiction when private Roman law is praised 
and public stigmatized as despotic. 

^ * Conscience and honor are conceptions which ancient society knew 
nothing about.' — Taine. They were built up by Christianity. 

§ 17 The Beginnings of France 

Gibbon, xxxviii. Milnian, as at § 12. Durny, 41 sqq. Freeman [Hist. Ess., i ser.], 
' The Franks and the Gauls.' Arnold, Fr'dnkische Zeit, ii. de Coulanges, as at § 15. 

Among the new kingdoms that of the Franks, many- 
wise least promising at first, was alone destined to per- 
manence. Its superior strength lay in the facts (i) that 
it was not a transplanted kingdom, (2) that it was catho- 
lic.^ The omnipotent clergy prepared and aided all its 
conquests. Merovingian history had four periods : ^ i 
Conquest, by Chlodovech and his sons, to the first re- 
union, under Lothar I. At Chlodovech's death his 
kingdom embraced all Gaul save Burgundy, Septimania 
and Armorica, besides a district beyond the Rhine. In 
accordance with German custom it was divided among 
his four sons, who further extended it over the Thurin- 
gians, the Burgundians, the Bavarians and Provence,^ so 
that Lothar I ruled a realm twice as large as his father's. 
2 Turmoil and inner feuds, to the second reunion, under 
Lothar II. Note in this period the strifes and worth- 
lessness of the kings, the incipient sundering of new 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 12/ 

nationalities, the onsets of Avars and Lombards, the 
power and insubordination of the great nobles. 3 Rela- 
tive order, the Merovingian house at its apogee, under 
Lothar II and Dagobert. Their sway reaches from 
the Elbe and Inn to the Bay of Biscay, the forms of 
law are better observed, civil wars cease, vassals obey. 
4 The Merovingian power declines, the causes being 
those mentioned in 2, which begin again to show their 
effects even before Dagobert's death. 

1 Gregory of Tours, Hist. Francormn, II, 30, thus naively tells the 
story of Chlodovech's conversion : ' The queen [Clotilda] did not cease 
preaching to the king to recognize the true God and neglect idols, but no 
resource could move him to these until once he was making war upon the 
Alamans and was forced to confess, as the two armies struggled, that the 
foe were cutting down his men at a terrific rate and that their utter de- 
struction was imminent. Seeing this he lifted his eyes to heaven, and, 
pricked in heart and moved to tears, said : O Jesus Christ, whom Clotilda 
preaches as the Son of the living God, who dost declare that thou givest 
aid to them that labor and victory to them that hope in thee, I devotedly 
beseech the glory of thy assistance, that if thou shalt indulge me with 
victory over these enemies and I shall find in thee that virtue which the 
people of thy name profess that they have proved, I may believe in thee 
and be baptized in thy name. For I have invoked my gods only to find 
that they are far off from helping me; wherefore I believe them power- 
less, not succoring those who obey them. Thee now I invoke and in thee 
I desire to believe; only save me from my adversaries.' He goes on to 
relate the speedy victory and the baptism. At this St. Remigius officia- 
ted, using to Chlodovech the words : Mitis depone colla Sigainber^ adora 
quod incendisti, incende quod adorasti. 

2 511, Chlodovech dies. 558-561, reunion under Lothar I. 613-628, 
reunion under Lothar II. 638, Dagobert dies. 

^ For the geography see Freeman, Hist'l Geog., 121 sqq. 



128 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 



§ 1 8 Rise of the Carolingian House 

Milmati, IV, ix-xl. Stille, iii. Diiruy, I, v. Arnold, as at § 17. Guizoi, Civiliza- 
tion in France, xix. Bonnell, Anfange d. kar. Hauses. Oelsiier, Jahrb. d. 
/rank. Reiclis unter Konig Pippin, 

There was no de facto Merovingian king after Dago- 
bert, but the real kings were the inaiores domiLS. The 
orio^in of their office is obscure. The maior domus first 
appears in course of the sixth century, as a mere officer 
of the royal household, with no rule and no authority in 
the government save through influence over the king. 
Subsequently the office has marvellous development.^ 
I Incumbents of it are guardians of royal minors, and 
as these are numerous and many of them imbecile when 
of age, the guardianship merges into a premiership of 
the kingdom. 2 After 613 the maiores domus of Bur- 
gundy and Austrasia succeed there the former kings, 
ruling for Dagobert over even the dukes in those realms, 
their earlier function being entirely superseded. 3 Pip- 
pin II attaches the office in Austrasia permanently to 
his own family. 4 Martell makes himself maior domus 
of the whole kingdom. Merovingians are by this time 
"^wx^ faineants? 5 Pippin III becomes veritable king. 
The office, once grown important, naturally fell to the 
nobles, and became matter of contention among them, 
in which contention the preeminent ability of the Caro- 
lingians brought them the victory. Martell's success 
may also, to an extent, be viewed as a triumph of Aus- 
trasian^ over Neustrian society. Pippin's revolutionary 
step, for which his powerful personality and will pre- 
pared him, was rendered safe and even imperative by 
the concurrence of people and pope. This popular 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME I29 

judgment, the decisive consideration, was due to the 
unparalleled services of Pippin, his brother, and his 
father, in bringing unity, tranquillity, and enlargement 
to the realm. They had repelled the Mohammedans, 
exalted Prankish over ducal authority in all directions, 
and well begun the conquest of the Saxons. If they 
had robbed the church of temporal goods,* they had 
furthered its unity and its discipline, and forced it to 
conform more to its profession. 

1 622-c.'38, Pippin I, of Landen. 640-'56, his son, Grimwald. 687- 
714, his nephew, Pippin II, of Heristal, grandson of I. 720-'4i, his son, 
Karl Martell. 732, Battle of Poitiers [Tours], 751 ('52) Martell's son, 
Pippin III [le Bref], king. 

2 Childeric III speaks of Karlmann [Carloman], Martell's son, Pippin 
Ill's brother, as ' the maior domus who has set us on the throne.' The maior 
domus is hailed as the one * to whom the Lord God has entrusted the care 
of the kingdom.' Pippin III speaks of ' our kingdom ' ere yet king. 

^ Austrasia meant the east or northeast part of the Frankish land, Neustria 
the west and southwest, but the line between them was mobile. The origin 
of the name * Neustria ' is unknown. On boundaries etc. of Burgundy, 
Bryce, Appendix A. 

* Pious as Martell seemed to Gregory III [§ 19], the clergy of his own 
land consigned him to hell for sacrilege. — Milman, vol. ii, 391. 

§ 19 Breach of West with East 

Gibbon, chaps, xlv, xlix, Ix. Mihnan, III, vii, IV, vi-ix. Lea [in Studies], ' Rise of 
the Temporal Power.' Fisher [in Discussions] ' Temporal Kingdom of the Popes.' 
Tosti, storia dell' origine dello scistna greco, 2 v. 

Contrary to his purpose, Constantine's erection of a 
New Rome had proved a powerful cause of cleavage in 
the empire. Theoretically harmonious, the two emperors 
were actually jealous. Pope warred with patriarch on 
each of the numerous theological questions that arose : 
Nestorianism,^ Monothelitism, clerical celibacy, papal 
supremacy, images, l\i^ filioque^ eucharist-bread, time of 



I30 THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 

easter. Notwithstanding her loyalty to the Byzantine 
court it was more or less by its connivance that Alaric and 
Theodoric invaded Italy. Both the difficulty and the 
brevity of Justinian's conquest there taught Rome at 
once the necessity and the possibility of self-dependence. 
By 568, fifteen years after the fall of the Ostrogoths, North 
Italy was at the feet of the Lombards. The Centre and 
the South remained professedly subj ect to Constantinople, 
but the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento and the exarch 
of Ravenna were practically independent. At 600 the 
pope too, de hire under the exarch, was de facto full 
temporal lord over Rome and over a considerable terri- 
tory outside. Gregory the Great (590-604) at the head 
of his own army leads in the defence of Rome against 
the Lombards and is styled dux plcbis, and when, later, 
a regular duke for Rome is appointed he figures as but 
the pope's subaltern. Already since Constantine a 
landholder, the pontiff was now a sovereign. Under 
Gregory II, 715-731, the church's territory constitutes 
a formal ^ respublica' with its own ^ exercitics romaiius,' 
connection with the emperor being purely nominal.^ 
Although out of policy the government of Rome was 
till 800 administered in the emperor's name, the de- 
finitive rupture* was occasioned by the iconoclastic con- 
troversy. Gregory defends images. Emperor Leo the 
Isaurian threatens, Gregory defies him and ejects the duke 
his representative, reconciliation becomes impossible. 

1 In 483, before this strife ended, Felix of Rome and Acacius of Con- 
stantinople stood mutually excommunicate. Pope Anastasius II, for 
daring to doubt Acacius's damnation, missed place in the canon of saints. 
Dante, Inf., canto xi, sees Anastasius in hell, as the one ' whom out of the 
right way Photinus drew.' I.e., he communed with Photinus, who was still 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME I3I 

in communion with Constantinople. Anastasius died suddenly : Baronius 
doubts not it was by the hand of God. On all these controversies see Ch. 
Ill, §§ 19, 20. In the warm rencounter between Gregory the Great and 
John the Faster it is the Constantinopolitan who offends by calling him- 
self ' universal bishop.' Gregory will not allow this and assails his foe 
with those levelling passages of Scripture, like Matthew xxiii, 8 sqq., 
which protestants have used to such purpose against papacy. He twits 
John with fasting for effect. — Greg. Mag. Ep. V, xx. In the Monothelite 
quarrel Pope Honorius I [d. 638] declared for the single-will doctrine, 
which the VI th General Council, Constantinople, 681, '2, pronounced 
heresy, cursing Honorius by name. Yet that very Council received from 
H's successor. Pope Agatho, a solemn breve declaring all occupants 
of St. Peter's Chair infallible. A. died before hearing of H.'s anath- 
ema, but Leo II, the next pope, agreed to the Council's decrees and 
expressly repeated the ' aeterna condemnatio ' of heretic Honorius. The 
regular papal oath in the Liber ditimtis, Migne, CV, p. 52, names H. 
among the anathematized heretics. Hefele, though a catholic, faithfully 
sets forth these facts, Conciliengesch.^ HI. He also in his 1st ed. drew 
the conclusion, which the Vatican decree of papal infallibility has apparently 
led him to omit in the second. See the question handled by v. Schulte, 
the ablest catholic lawyer in Europe, Macht d. r'dni. P'dpste, 25 sqq. 

2 The Council of Toledo, 589, announced a doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
as ex patre ET FiLio procedens, contrary to that of the Nicene Creed, which 
derives the Spirit from the Father alone. Various synods in the West 
discussed the innovation, until that of Aix-la-Chapelle, 809, boldly in- 
serted ^ filioque^ in the Latin translation of that creed. The eastern 
church has protested from then till now. 

3 Such was the rise of the pope's temporality. Under Gregory II the 
domain was- not more than 80 miles by 40 in extent. It was swollen by 
donations from the Lombard kings and later by Frankish conquests from 
the Lombards, made over to the pope. On the spurious edict of donation 
[by Constantine], Milman, vol. i, 94, n.. Gibbon, vol. v, 34, Legge, Temp'l 
Power of the Popes, Cutts, Constantine. 

* But not ecclesiastically till the nth century, when East opposed, 
West insisted upon, unleavened bread for the eucharist. Legates vainly 
sent to Constantinople to demand obedience retired, leaving on the great 
altar of St. Sophia in the pope's name the ban : * Accursed be Michael, mis- 
called patriarch, Leo, bishop of Acrida, and all their followers, with those 
of Simon, Vales, Donatus, Arius, Nicolaus, Severus, and with all the ene- 
mies of God and the Holy Ghost, the Manichoeans, the Nazarenes and all 
heretics, yea, with the devil and his angels. Amen, Amen. Amen.' 



132 the dissolution of rome " 

§ 20 Papal Alliance with the Franks 

Same auth. as last §. Also: Mi'lman, as at § 18. Creighton, Popes during Reformation, 
I, Int. Ka^ifmanti, bd. ii, b. iii. 

But Rome is not safe. The emperors, angry, will not 
forget ; the warlike Lombards, barbarous, and of the 
detested Arian faith, are at the door. The long valid 
artifice of alternate leagues with the Lombards and the 
dukes of Lower Italy fails when the powerful King 
Luitprand, vowing to reduce all Italy, attacks the 
Eternal City. The Franks are now Rome's sole hope. 
Gregory III through a solemn embassy lays the golden 
keys of St. Peter's tomb at the feet of Karl Martell, 
imploring Frankish support in his purposed formal 
declaration of independence from the eastern throne. 
Martell aids only by diplomacy. Pippin,^ later, by arms. 
Rome is permanently delivered from the Lombards, 
who still remain near enough to shield it from the 
emperor, and has learned the taste of freedom from all 
temporal lordship. The domains of the pope are assured 
and vastly enlarged, embracing now nearly the whole 
exarchate of Ravenna. In these negotiations both 
Franks and Lombards treat with the pope as with 
an independent sovereign. This alliance between the 
Carolingians and the popes was of weightiest conse- 
quence for the subsequent history. Zachary ^ had 
sanctioned Pippin's coup d'etat, Pippin had freed 
Rome. Each side soon began to prize what it had 
given above what it had received.^ On occasion, how- 
ever, Rome learned to exalt also what she had received. 

1 What moves Pippin is the following letter from Pope Stephen, in the 
name of St. Peter: *I, Peter, the Apostle of God, who have accepted 



THE DISSOLUTION OF ROME 1 33 

you as my sons, warn you to save the city of Rome from the Lombards. 
Do not endure that it should longer be tormented by its foes, else will 
your bodies and your souls too sometime be tormented in hell fire. Do 
not permit my people to be scattered abroad, else will the Lord scatter 
you abroad as he did once the people Israel. Beyond all the other peo- 
ples of the earth the Franks have shown themselves submissive to me the 
Apostle Peter, and on that account I have always heard their prayers 
when they have cried to me in need; and I will continue to give you the 
victory over your enemies if ye now come quickly to the aid of my city 
Rome. But if ye disobey my injunction, know ye that in the name of the 
Holy Trinity I then exclude you from the Kingdom of God and from eter- 
nal life, in virtue of the power given me by the Lord Christ.' — Codex Caro- 
linus, ep. iii, p. 92. 

2 Zachary, 74i-'52, was the last pope who sought confirmation from 
the eastern emperor. Pope Stephen after him, ']S2-'j, besought help from 
the East, probably assured that it would not be rendered, so fortifying his 
excuse for calling the Franks. 

^ Frederic Barbarossa to Adrian IV: 'What were your predecessors 
before Constantine and his grant, Karl Great and Otho ! ' Adrian to 
Frederic : * And what a poor corner of earth was your Germany till 
exalted by Zachary ! ' 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER V 

Hallam, Middle Ages,** 3 v. Gibbon, Milman, Duruy, Waltz, 
Guizot, Lea, Stille, Schulte, Bryce, Sheppard, Leo, and Lewis con- 
tinued [see bibliog. to IV. Bryce is best single vol. in Eng., Schulte in 
Germ.], v. Giesebrecht, Gesch. d. deiitschenKaise7'zeil,** ^\. v. Raumer, 
Gesch. d. Hohenstaufen ti. ihrer Zeit,** 6 v. Guizot, Popular H. of 
France,* 8 v.; Masson's Guizot's do., I v. Freeman, Hist'l Essays, i ser. 
Remington, Epochs of the Papacy. Creighton, Papacy dg. Reformation, 
Int. Villemain, L. of Greg. VII,** 2 v. Gfrorer, Pabsi Gregorius VII 
u. sein Zeitalter,* 7 v. [from catholic pt. of view. Very full]. Smith 
[P.], H. of the Christ. Ch. dg. Mid. Ages,* 2 v. Maitland, Dark Ages * 
[manyorig.doc.]. Michelet, yJ/*?/*?;? Age* [in France], v. Ranke, Welt- 
gesch** Theile, V-VII; H. of the Popes,** 3 v. Trench, Mediaev. Ch. 
H. Prutz [in Oncken], Staatengesch. d. Abendlandes im Mittelalter, 
I. Nitzsch, Gesch. d. deutschen Volkes, I-III. [Each of last 2 works 
exactly covers ground of this Ch.] Gregorovius, Rom im Mittelalter, 
8 V. Wattenbach, Deutsche Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter,** 2 v. 
Diimmler, Gesch. d. ostfr'dnk. Reichs, 2 v. Alzog [catholic] Ch. H.,* 
3 v. Dollinger, Kaiserthtwi Karls d. Grossen zt. sr. Nachfolger. Sis- 
mondi. Hist, des repiibliques italiennes,** 10 v. [also 16]. Lehuerou, 
Institutions Carolingiennes.** [Por a list of best histories of Germany 
in English, Literary World, Nov. 17, 1883.] 



CHAPTER V 

THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE WEST 



§ I The Ecclesiastical Unity of Europe 

Bright, Early Eng. Ch. H. Milman, IV, iv, v. Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Ch., ch. i. 
Guizot, xii-xv. Neander, vol. iii, 75 sqq., 121 sqq. Arnold, Fr'dnktsche Zeit, iii. 
Maclear, Mertvale, and Milman, in * Conversion of the West.' 

To explain the resuscitation of Western Rome, be- 
sides the rise of a French monarchy and its alHance 
with the popes, notice the progress of ecclesiastical or- 
ganization in Europe. For two centuries after Chlo- 
dovech the Gallic church lacked discipline and mis- 
sionary spirit. It adhered loosely to the pope, did not 
push Christianity with Frankish conquest into Germany. 
Change came from over Channel. The old-British 
church, apparently trampled out in the Saxon invasions, 
had in Ireland and Scotland from 400 to 600 immense 
development in numbers, learning, purity of faith and 
life.^ lona was almost a British Rome. Thence through 
zealous missionaries all Scotland and North England, 
including many of the invaders, received the gospel. 
Earnest preachers crossed to France. The seventh 
century saw many Culdee^ monasteries built here and 
in Italy, seats of the best letters and religious life these 
lands had yet known. South Germany too was evan- 
gelized, Frankish missionaries now assisting, and prom- 
ising Christian beginnings made among the Thuringians 



136 THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

and Saxons. Meantime the new-British church,^ child 
of Gregory the Great and the papacy, was rivalHng the 
old in both growth and missionary enterprise. It too 
sent missionaries to the continent, among them Boni- 
face, the learned, enthusiastic, indefatigable servant of 
Rome, to Germany apostle, to France reformer. Util- 
izing earlier labors and aided by Pippin and Karlmann, 
this religious hero succeeded, despite clerical apathy 
and strong opposition from the old-British school,* in 
refining Christian faith and manners and establishing 
firm papal sway to the extreme Frankish border. 

1 The noble lives and labors of Sts. Patrick and Columba are set forth 
in Neander, Milman, Bright, and in all the Ch. Histories. Columba, who 
founded lona, must be distinguished from Columbanus, the leader of the 
Irish mission to the continent, who built the monasteries of Luxeuil and 
Fontenay in France and Bobbio in Italy. He was accompanied by St. 
Gall, from whom, as founder of its monastery, the present St. Gall in 
Switzerland is named. 

^ * Culdee ' is the Celtic * Keli-de ' = ' men of God.' 

3 On Gregory the Great, Queen Bertha, and the advent and triumph of 
papal Christianity in Britain, Milman, vol. ii, 175 sqq., and Green, H. of 
Eng. People, I, 37 sqq. There were for years Canterbury monks and lona 
monks. In the lona church polity the monastery was the central thing. 
Rome and Canterbury had a better organization and their victory is not to 
be regretted; yet Columban and Boniface adopted and enforced on their 
continental converts much that was characteristic of the lona system, as 
heavy penalties for negligence of confession and mass. The same influ- 
ence may be traced in the long continuance throughout the Frankish 
realm, of community life on the part of the clergy. At Karl Great's death 
the parish system was even in France still far from complete, the clergy 
living together either according to canonical rule or as members of convents. 

* Ebrard, in his Irischschottische Missionskirche and his Bonifatiics, 
propounds the view that the Culdees had a full systematic church organi- 
zation, wholly contrary to the Roman, — gainsaid by Fischer in his Boni- 
faiius. The Culdees admitted Rome's supremacy in rank but not in 
authority. See further, Hahn, Bonifaz u. Lul, and Funk, in the Hist. 
Jahrhiicher [Munich], IV, i, 1883. 



of the west 1 37 

§ 2 Carolus Imperator 

Gtiizot, XX. Bryce, iii-v. Gibbon, xlix. Milman, IV, xii. Nitzsch, bd. i, 193-225. 
Giesebrecht, bks. ii, iii. IVaitz, vol. iii, 79 sqq. Cutis, Charlemagne. Einhard, 
L. of do. [Harper's Half Ho. Ser.] Freytag, Bilder, I, 6. 

In such a condition of the West Karl the Great came 
to the Prankish throne in 'j^'^. Society was so brittle 
that, much as his father and grandfather had achieved, 
it still tasked Karl's genius to keep his kingdom one. 
But he did this and more. He (i) incorporated with it 
the half independent Aquitania and Bavaria, (2) forced 
the warlike Avars to peace and tribute, (3) reduced 
Italy, winning and taking the title King of the Lom- 
bards,^ (4) possessed himself of Spain to the Ebro, 
(5) completed the conquest of the Saxons. The fame 
of these partly diplomatic partly martial deeds filled the 
earth. Remote princes looked to Chlodovech's suc- 
cessor as general arbiter of European affairs.^ To Karl's 
court at Aachen came envoys from the eastern emperor, 
the caliph of Bagdad,^ the patriarch of Jerusalem, from 
Mauritania, Moorish and Christian Spain, the Avars and 
the Slavs. He had but to appear at Rome, signifying 
his wish therefor, and his imperial election and corona- 
tion ensued as of course. On Christmas day, 800, in the 
great Basilica of St. Peter,^ rising from prayer at the 
high altar, while shouts of ' Carolo vita et victoria ' as- 
cended from the great congregation, Karl received at 
the hands of Leo HI an imperial crown. This act, in 
strictness as revolutionary,^ though justifiable, as it was 
momentous,^ contemplated the empire as one, Karl the 
successor of Constantine VI, Constantine I and Au- 
gustus. Such was the theory of the renewed empire 
through all the succeeding centuries.'^ 



138 THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

1 Pippin had only been their overlord. Schnorr has taken Karl's vic- 
tory over Desiderius, at Pavia, as subject for one of his great cartoons in 
the Johanneum at Dresden. The others relating to Karl are : Stephen 
blessing him at the age of 12, his Saxon victory at Fritzlar, the conversion 
of the Saxons, the Frankfort Synod, and the Roman coronation. 

2 Ethelred of England resided long at Karl's court. 

3 The famous Haroun Alraschid. Abdurrahman was now Ommiad 
caliph of Cordova in Spain. 

* Predecessor of the present St. Peter's, on the same spot. It had been 
built by Constantine. 

^ Neither the Roman election, so-called, nor the papal coronation was 
a source of legitimacy. Irene, just then upon the eastern throne, was a 
usurper, female succession being unknown to imperial law. — Gibbon, IV, 
586. Karl fully understood the irregularity of his proceeding, which prob- 
ably explains the unwillingness to be crowned ascribed to him by Einhard. 
He recognized Nicephorus and even sought marriage with Irene. — Waitz, 
vol. iii, 171. See note 7, below. 

^ Vet Einhard in his [official] Vita, makes next to nothing of this 
crowning. Evidently Aix-la-chapelle and Karl himself deemed German 
kingship practically of more consequence than the Roman imperium. 

"^ Waitz, vol. iii, 199 sqq., questions this, and certainly ideas respecting 
the relation of the new empire to the old were then most unclear; but the 
very meaning of the election and coronation, in view of the theory of the 
old empire, implied the engrafting of Karl upon the acknowledged imperial 
stock. Soon, however, there came to be two empires, an eastern and a 
western, in a sense different from that applicable under Arcadius and 
Honorius. Karl began by claiming Sicily and Lower Italy for the West, but 
in return for recognition by the East relinquished these, with Dalmatia and 
Venice. An analogue to Karl's imperial succession is found in that of the 
Seleucidae to Alexander. A seal ascribed to 800 reads : renovatio imperii 
romani. Dante, De Monarchia, bk. ii, assumes without argument that the 
empire of his time [1263-1321] is the strict continuation of the old Roman. 
Cf. Sheppard, 496 sqq. 

§ 3 His Government 

See lit. to § 2, esp. Gibbon, and Waitz, vol iii, 333 sqq. Guizot, xxi. Arnold, Fr'dn- 
kische Zeit, iv. Nitzsch, as at § 2. Vintry, Impots romains du vi au x siecle. 

Karl was far greater as conqueror and diplomatist 
than as lawgiver, in personal force and tact than in 



OF THE WEST 1 39 

large and statesmanlike plans. ^ Note his project to leave 
his realm divided, his recognition of the eastern em- 
peror, his ambiguous and perilous relation to the papacy.^ 
While restoring the empire he made no effort to repro- 
duce its unity, law or system of administration. Italy 
and Saxony remained separate kingdoms.^ The genius 
as well as the form of the government continued Ger- 
manic : the people the army, no salaried governmental 
functionaries, national assemblies, not without influence 
on legislation.* Yet rule was chiefly personal, the em- 
peror practically absolute. Legislation and the admin- 
istration of justice were little systematic, capitularies 
regarded momentary needs, flagrant wrongs, especially 
bribery and favoritism, went unpunished. Karl's great 
merit lay in imparting strength and centralization to 
public authority. Herzogs were humbled, their office 
made mobile. The eastern, northern and Spanish fron- 
tiers were guarded by a line of Marks, each under its 
Markgraf or margrave, more independent and powerful 
than the simple Graf. The Grafs judicial function 
passed to a new official, the jitdex, whose district or 
^fisciis ' might cover several Graf-districts. A most im- 
portant new officer was the missies dominicns, the em- 
peror's special representative. Two at least of these he 
yearly appointed to act for him in each grand division 
of the empire with full authority. They held courts 
and assemblies, superintended cloister-schools and com- 
pelled all high servants of both church and state to their 
duties. They were especially charged to secure justice 
to the poor. Through these courts and the emperor's 
own, judicial procedure was simplified, greatly to the 
advancement of equity.^ 



140 THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

1 Waitz, as above, has an interesting and learned note giving the views 
of all the greatest writers upon this famous man, as to his worthiness of 
place beside Caesar, Alfred and others. Gibbon's, vol. v, 44 sqq., is the 
correct view. Even in war the Saxons were nearly Karl's match, opposing 
him successfully for ^2 years. Roncesvalles was a confessed defeat, and, 
much to our surprise, Karl did not face the Mohammedans again. 

2 Karl's idea, the regular one among the Germans, was to divide his 
realm at his death among his three sons, and he would have done so, had 
not the two elder, Karl and Pippin, died before him, leaving Louis the 
Pious to inherit alone. Recognition of the East [§ 2, n. 7] was now 
logically an admission that Karl's imperatorship was abnormal. On his 
relation to the pope, see next §. 

3 The Italian army mustered by itself. Saxony was less dependent than 
Italy, but paid no tribute to the empire. 

* Yet comprising only the great. The narrowing process had begun 
which resulted in the electoral college, § 8. Cf. Ch. IV, § 15, n. 3. 

^ The chief improvements were that i) the courts held by the missi 
used the simple and direct methods of securing justice prevalent in the 
king's personal court, of which in fact they were an extension, while 
ii) in the local courts themselves certain select-men, called scabini, were 
appointed judges, whose official duty it was always to be present at the 
stated assizes. They supplanted for judicial purposes the popular local 
assemblies, which, though still appointed to meet three times a year, were 
in something the same desuetude as the national. 



§ 4 His Relations with the Church 

Bryce, ch. v. Milman, V, i. Giiizot, xxvii. Nitzsch, as at § 2. Lehuerou, 
chaps, ix, X. 

Karl was pope as well as emperor.^ His policy was 
to reform the church and to unify it around Rome as 
centre, yet keeping it, including the pope as its supreme 
official, subject to himself. Full of theocratic ideas and 
lacking clear conception of the state as possessing legiti- 
mate function independently of the church, he still as- 
signed to the state the higher place. The state he con- 
sidered bound to further the ends of the church — thus 



OF THE WEST I4I 

each of Karl's campaigns was a crusade — yet church 
property and office were to be administered as belonging 
to the state. Karl considered his care as well the doc- 
trine and life of the clergy as external ecclesiastical 
affairs. He exhorts the pope to a godly walk, opposes 
him in doctrinal matters, provides for no appeal to him 
even by ecclesiastics, takes the responsibility against 
him of placing ' filioque ' ^ in the creed. He forces both* 
incumbent and intending clergy to diligent study, pro- 
vides for preaching in the vernacular,-^ insists that even 
the laity know the paternoster^ and the creed and un- 
derstand the main Christian doctrines.^ He improved 
the discipline and efficiency of monasteries and had 
some success in subordinating them to the bishops. In 
a word, Karl faithfully set forward the unfinished task 
of Boniface. This even more than he wished or was 
aware. The church seemed docile, yet its conviction of 
its relation to the state, so different from Karl's, was 
already a part of its life, and the new forces wherewith 
his efforts had quickened it, it was destined to employ 
to the full in realizing that conception at the expense 
of his.^ 

1 He was in his time more or less seriously called ' episcopus episcopo- 
runi^ the title which Tertullian was the first to apply to the bishop of 
Rome. Einhard adverts to Karl's assiduous perusal of Augustine's City 
of God. 

2 See Ch. IV, § 19, n. 2, Bryce, 64; Milman, vol. ii, 500; Richey, 
Nicene Creed and the Filioque. 

^ Karl's time was a great epoch in the history of preaching. Every 
bishop was to have a number of sermons translated from the distinguished 
fathers into the language of the people, to be preached as postils by the 
ignorant priests. 

* Under penalty of whipping. But as enforcement had to be left to 
church authorities, this part of the law amounted to little. Bishops could 



142 THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

for certain offences inflict stripes on their clergy. Karl also enacted a law 
against work on Sunday. 

° The emperor must have had in all this a genuinely Christian aim. 
He ordered his missi to ask bishops and abbots exactly what they meant 
by renouncing the world, and by what signs they told him who renounced 
from him who did not. ' Is it that he does not bear arms and is not 
publicly married? Does he renounce the world who toils each day, no 
matter by what means, to increase his possessions, now promising the 
beatitudes of heaven, now threatening the pains of hell?' Cf. the oath 
[Bryce, 65] which Karl made all his subjects swear to him after his crown- 
ing as emperor. In painful contrast with this healthy spirit is Einhard's 
recital of the theft by his servants, of the bones and dust of two saints, 
Marcellinus and Peter Martyr, in Rome. The servants, themselves in holy 
orders, after fasting and prayer for divine aid, burglariously enter the 
sacred tomb, break open the great stone coffin, snatch the strange plunder 
and away across the Alps. It was in 827. Einhard, directed by a vision, 
bestowed the reliques at MUhlheim, whose name thence became changed 
into Seligenstadt. 

^ Cf. §§12 sqq.; Milman, vol. ii, 484 sqq., 507 sqq. Thus we see 
the pseudo-Isidorian decretals taking form soon after Karl's decease. — 
Milman, vol. iii, 58 sqq. Ranke, Weltgesch. VII, ch. v, is on these de- 
cretals. They contain pieces as old as the ist century, and increase grad- 
ually in number, till by the middle of the 9th nearly the whole body is 
present, though there are additions after this. The leading ideas are 
purity of life in clergy, supremacy of church over state. Their genuine- 
ness was suspected only from the 14th century and disproved early in the 
i6lh by their numberless anachronisms. 



§ 5 His Aid to Culture and Letters 

Guizot, xxii, xxiii. Mjtllhiger, Schools of Charles Great. Einhard, as at § 2. Mon- 
nier, Alcuin. Lorenz, Leben Alctiins. Milman, vol. ii, 508 sq. Hallam, Lit. of 
Europe, I, i. Wattenbach, Geschichtsquelle7i, I, 105 sqq. 

Himself scarcely able to write, the emperor was cause 
of a most powerful impulse to the intellectual life of his 
time. The studies which Italy and England had in the 
seventh and eighth centuries preserved from an earlier 
age and themselves sedulously pursued, which Colum- 



OF THE WEST I43 

ban and Boniface had introduced in France and Ger- 
many, he helped to a vigorous Hfe and influence, re- 
garding effort of this kind his duty to both people and 
church. The spirit of York and Monte Casino filled 
the Frankish cloisters. Savans from every land were 
called to court, as Einhard, Paulus Diaconus, Alcuin of 
York, Peter of Pisa. The court school,^ directed by 
Alcuin and attended by Karl with his children, became 
a centre of letters for the realm, its pupils, made abbots 
and bishops, founding copies of it everywhere. Text- 
books were composed, classics and fathers translated, 
annotated, learned by heart. For the times, culture was 
not narrow. Einhard was historian, literator, architect. 
History, poetry,^ astronomy and theology were ardently 
cultivated. On multitudes of questions, especially in 
theology and ethics, earnest discussions were had, formal 
treatises composed. Many studied critically, thought 
deeply. Scotus Erigena and Gottschalk ^ were born of 
Karl's age. In this intellectual movement the great 
monarch participated personally. The healthy reaction 
in favor of classical study, though originally due to 
English influence, he earnestly patronized. In two 
points his interposition was positive and direct, viz., in 
aid (i) toward rendering German a literary speech,* 
(2) toward deepening and intensifying in the Germans 
the conceptions of the Christian religion. 

1 This is a great epoch in the history of education also. Karl's 
daughters as well as his sons attended the schola palatina, all pursuing 
the same studies. 

2 Much of the poetry is rhyme, putting it almost beyond doubt that 
rhyme was not of Moorish or Arabian origin. Hallam [Lit. of Eur., 
vol. i, 32] thinks Muratori, Gray and Turner have proved that rhymed 
Latin verse was in use from the end of the 4th century. 



144 THE MEDIAEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

^ John Scotus Erigena lived in the 9th century, and was the chief in- 
tellectual light of the middle age. He knew Greek, placed reason above 
authority, and taught a philosophy verging toward pantheism. Though 
a Briton he passed most of his active life at the court of Charles the Bald, 
dying about 880. Gottschalk was also a 9th century light, dying in 868. 
His fame rests upon his advocacy, costing him his life, of the predestina- 
tion-doctrine taught by St. Augustine [Ch. HI, § 19]. In one point he 
went beyond Augustine, viz., in teaching predestination to damnation as 
well as to salvation. On both these men, Guizot, xxviii, xxix. 

4 He made the first attempt at a German grammar, gave German names 
to the winds and months and collected those old German hero-songs, 
' which, having passed through the Latin verse of the monks, came forth at 
length as the Nibelungen and the Heldenbuch.' For Karl's influence in 
germanizing religious thought, see last §. For the myths concerning 
him, Bulfinch, Legends of Charlemagne. Reckoning from the Christian 
era now begins, also the opening of the year at Christmas instead of 
March I, which had been the custom of the Franks. January i did not 
begin the year till the i6th century. 

§ 6 The Empire after Karl 

Guizot, xxiv. Bryce, passim. Giesebrecht, bks. iii-v. Schulte, Anhang IV. 
Nitzsch, bd. i, 226 to end. 

The empire thus renewed became an integral part of 
the world's order, lasting nominally at least, till 1806, 
and through its fortunes lending main content and in- 
terest to European history for many centuries, till it 
was obscured by the growth of kingdoms within its own 
bosom and outlying. Notice five periods : i The Caro- 
Imgian-Italiaiiy to Otho the Great, 962.^ Marked de- 
pression supervenes, the empire surrendering its vigor, 
almost its life. ii The Saxon-FranconiaUy to Henry ^ 
IV, 1056. Renewal comes. The emperor's supremacy 
over the pope is asserted, admitted and maintained. 
The new prosperity continued long : Henry HI, 1039- 
'56, saw the empire at its loftiest eminence, iii The 



OF THE WEST I45 

Hohenstaitfeiiy to the Interregnum of 1254- '73. The 
supremacy spoken of is asserted but not admitted or 
maintained.^ Here fall the crusades, also the terrible 
struggles of Henry IV, Frederic I and II with the 
papacy, which now, under Hildebrand and Innocent 
HI, puts in practice those absolutist principles which 
have been developing since Augustine and Leo the 
Great, iv TJie Earlier-Hapsbiirg, to the Reformation, 
1520. The emperor is fully subject to the pope, yet 
still possessing considerable though declining power. 
To this decline the Renaissance greatly contributed, 
v TJie Latci'-Hapsbiirg,^ to Francis H's abdication, 1806. 
The empire is much of this time little more than a 
name. 

1 This is the date of his coronation as emperor. He became king in 
936. V. Sybel connects this terrible anarchy with the then universal belief 
that the end of the world would come about the year looo. On this 
period, see § 7. 

2 We end the period here, M-ith Henry III, as a natural turning-point; 
but of course Henry IV and Henry V also belonged to the great Franco- 
nian or Salian house, Conrad III, 1 1 38-1 152, being the first Hohenstaufen 
or Swabian emperor. Frederic I, the Barbarossa, was Conrad's nephew. 

^ It came nearest to being maintained under Frederic I, ii52-'90, but 
even he had to recede. See § 18. 

* After the Great Interregnum, all the emperors were of the Hapsburg 
house except Henry VII [Bavaria] and Francis I [Lorraine], husband of 
Maria Theresa, Joseph II and Leopold II, their sons, and Francis II, 
their grandson, are to be sure usually reckoned to the house of Lorraine, 
but were, through Maria Theresa, of Hapsburg blood. 



146 the medieval roman empire 
§ 7 Otho the Great 

Bryce, vi, ix. Mibnan, V, esp. xi. Secretan, Feodalite, 90 sq. Prutz, I, H. 
Ratike, Weltgesch., VI, ch. xv. Lehuerou, ch. xi. 

Powerfully as Karl the Great's reign has affected all 
political evolution since,^ the age immediately following 
his was one of deplorable reaction, of anarchy worse 
than that to which he had succeeded in setting term, 
a profound night, wherein, though present, the princi- 
ples of order for a moment realized by him eluded men's 
grasp and gaze. None of his successors were his peers, 
the earhest the least so. Henry the Fowler, 919-36, 
was the first to remind of him. Europe now in the 
utmost political distraction : West Francia permanently 
separate from East,^ neither one a unity even by itself, 
onsets by Saracens, Avars and Normans so incessant 
and terrific that the empire hardly survives. Several 
German kings forego the imperial dignity, still a larger 
number disgrace it. Henry the Fowler having brought 
a good degree of order to the German kingdom, his 
greater son, Otho, 936-' 73, not only completes this work 
but crosses the Alps to claim and receive the Caesars' 
crown, 962. In effect Otho created the empire anew 
as truly as Karl, though his act was far less decisive 
theoretically. Constitutionally considered his empire 
only continued Karl's, whose programme Otho exactly 
pursued in all its main features : conquest, enforce- 
ment of order, mastery and direction of the church. 
The papacy, grown weak and base,^ he dominated and 
purified. 

1 The ideal which Karl had realized for an instant never completely 
passed from view. The formal unity of the political world was not kept 



OF THE WEST 1 47 

up, that of the ecclesiastical lost much of its perfection. Yet but for the 
immortal Carolingian, without that half-century of glory and relative order 
which he gave to the West, and of which the living memory was always 
retained, who can say whether Europe and the whole world with it would 
not have been re-entombed in that savage state, defying history and the 
negation of civilization, which for six or seven centuries after the lapse of 
old Rome continually seemed about to begin? — Secretan. 

2 West Francia was France, East Francia Germany. They had been 
tending apart ever since the treaty of Verdun, 843. Only for the years 
884-' 7 Charles the Fat, son of Louis the German, grandson of Louis the 
Pious and great-grandson of Karl Great, united all the old Frankish 
empire under his rule. The Diet of Tribur, 887, deposed him as 
faineant. The midland between the central part of the Lotharingia 
laid out at Verdun, nearly coinciding with the Elsass-Lothringen of to- 
day, has been an object of contention between France and Germany ever 
since. Elsass-Lothringen forms now a single * Reichsland^ not Reichs- 
lande [still less Reichsldnder, as Bryce writes — bad German as well as 
mistaken political geography]. 

^ Le., during the times of Popes Sergius and John X, when the pros- 
titutes Theodora and her two daughters, Theodora and Marozia, disposed of 
the papal cap [not tiara till 1048] as they listed. — Milman, vol iii, 158 sqq. 

§ 8 The Empire and the German Kingdom 

Bryce, viii, xii ; ibid. 452 sqq. Schtdte, 201 sqq. Waitz, III, 221 sqq. 

Through precedent coupled with the prestige and 
power of German kings, not otherwise, the Roman em- 
pire from the imperial cornation of Otho the Great, 962, 
became attached to, almost identified with, the German 
kingdom. The kings as such came to be styled kings 
of the Romans, the empire a German empire,^ the latter 
the more naturally as the empire remained longest effi- 
cient in Germany. That the emperor should be a Ger- 
man king was from this date thought constitutionally 
necessary,^ though several earlier emperors had lacked 
this character. The relation between empire and king- 



148 THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

dom was never exactly determined, for many centu- 
ries scarcely considered. Imperial sovereignty and the 
king's feudal sovereignty, so different in nature, hence 
reacted upon and greatly modified each other, producing 
among others these weighty consequences : i The Ro- 
man law became law for the German land. 2 The em- 
pire remained elective. The rise of the electoral college 
is obscure. The earliest German kings were, we have 
seen, chosen in popular assembly. By degrees the 
number fell off, only the foremost imperial vassals at 
length remaining. The Golden Bull ^ of Emperor 
Charles IV, 1356, limited membership in the college to 
the Archbishops of Mayence, Treves and Cologne,* with 
the Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Brandenburg, King of 
Bohemia and Count Palatine of the Rhine. ^ 3 The Ger- 
man king, often absent, always distracted with imperial 
cares, gradually became unable to assert himself as 
king. His subalterns, as princes, dukes, electors, some 
of them at length as kings,* waxed independent, while 
his royal office waned to a shadow. The same suffered 
also from the humiliation of the imperial power by the 
popes. 

1 But this was never its proper title. Strictly it wa.s the Roman or 
Holy Roman Empire. Although Francis II, in abdicating its throne, 
called the old empire the German Empire, strictly there was never a 
'German Empire' or a 'German Emperor' till 1871, Now both exist. 
Coins of Frederic I [e.g.] bear the legend, Frederic dei Gra Romanor. 
Impertor Augs. 

2 Apostolica sedes ilium in imperatorum debeat corotiare qui rite 
fuerit coronatus in regem, wrote Innocent III. But one could be chosen 
king, and so emperor, who was not a German, as Richard, Earl of Corn- 
wall, and Alphonso of Castile [§ 20, n. 3]. 

3 An edict, called ' bull ' from the bulla or seal upon it, composed in 
this case of gold. 



OF THE WEST I49 

* In German, Mainz, Trier and Koln. These prelates were imperial 
chancellors for Germany, Burgundy and Italy respectively. The bull made 
the first the convener of the college and Frankfort instead of Aix-la- 
Chapelle [Aachen] the place of meeting, which it remained henceforth. 
Duruy, 507 sqq., has a fine brief account of this bull. 

^ Saxony also held the honorary office of Marshal, Brandenburg that of 
Chamberlain, Bohemia that of Cup-bearer, the Palatinate that of Seneschal. 
The college in its oldest form had the mere right of praetaxation or 
official nomination. On this, Bryce, 229 sqq.; Harnack, d. Kurfilrsten- 
koll. bis ztir Mitte d. xiv yakrh., and Quidde, Entstehiing d. Kw'filrsten- 
kollegiuvis. By this bull the duke and the count were to be regents in 
case of interregnum. The Palatinate lost its electorship by its revolt from 
the emperor in the Thirty Years' War [Ch. IX], the honor passing to 
Bavaria. The peace of Westphalia renewed it for the Palatinate, thus 
increasing the number of electors to eight. In 1692 the Duke of Hannover 
was made a ninth elector. The number fell to eight again in 1777, when, 
by the extinction of the Bavarian line, the Palatine countship and the 
dukeship of Bavaria became again united in one man as they had been 
under Ludwig I and Otho II, the Illustrious, of the great Wittelsbach 
house. Otho I, von Wittelsbach, was invested with the duchy of Bavaria 
in 1 1 83 by Frederic Barbarossa, when it escheated to the empire through 
the treason of Henry the Lion. Ludwig I, son, succeeded Otho I in 
Bavaria in 123 1, having already possessed the Palatinate since 1 2 14, when 
he received it from Emperor Frederic II. Otho the Illustrious, dying in 
1253, left the Palatinate, with the electorship, to his elder son, Ludwig 
the Severe, [Lower] Bavaria to his younger, Henry. From this time till 
the Diet of Regensburg, 1623, no electorate attaches to Bavaria. — Weber, 
Weltgesch., I, 833. 

§ 9 The Extent of the Empire 

Bryce, ch. xii, and Appendix C. Schulie, Anhang\. 

The jurisdiction of the empire had, at any given time, 
different degrees, and each of these varied with periods. 
The great emperors Hke their Roman predecessors, em- 
phasizing theory but falsifying fact, called themselves 
lords of the world.^ Parts of Frisia [Holland] and Switz- 
erland, nominally in the empire, were always as good 



150 THE MEDIAEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

as independent. Otho the Great lost Neustria, gained 
by conquests to the north and east. The emperor was 
efficient sovereign only in Germany, which, however, 
included Elsass-Lothringen and part of Flanders. Bur- 
gundy, though an imperial land,^ was much more inde- 
pendent. After Frederic Barbarossa, owing to the 
growth of vassals' power, some portion of Germany 
itself was nearly always in revolt. Lower Italy held 
to the East till the Norman Conquest,^ 1016-57. After 
this though claimed by the empire it never properly 
forms part thereof. The kingdom of Lombardy, over 
which he was in theory king as well as emperor, obeyed 
the emperor only as compelled, which, through the 
strength of its cities and the support of the popes, it 
could rarely be.^ Besides the lands mentioned, there 
were : i Vassal principalities outside the German king- 
dom, as Denmark, Hungary and Poland, acknowledging 
the emperor's sovereignty over them and, save when 
judging it safe to refuse, furnishing troops and tribute. 
2 Principalities strictly sovereign and independent, as 
Spain and England, recognizing the emperor's superi- 
ority, yet only in comity. That such were regarded as 
in some sense members of the empire is shown by the 
occasional election of emperors from them.^ 3 Princi- 
palities such as Iceland, Lithuania, Venice and the 
eastern empire which declined even this. France may 
be said to have passed on the death of Otho I,^ from the 
first of these classes to the second, as did, later, the 
states into which Germany itself broke up."^ 

1 Karl Great spoke of himself as ' ruling the kingdoms of the earth,* 
Frederic I of himself as * lord of the world.' The Emperor Sigismund on 
his death-bed gave command that his body should lie some days in state 



OF THE WEST I5I 

*to assure all men that the lord of the whole world was dead.' The elec- 
tors told Frederic III : ' We have chosen your grace as head protector and 
governor of all Christendom.' 

2 Bryce, 455. Notice that the kingship of Italy or Lombardy was as 
different as possible from the imperatorship, and that ' King of the 
Romans,' first applied by Henry III to his son, Henry IV, meant simply 
* King Elect,' being a title analogous to * Prince of Wales,' or ' Prince of 
Asturias,' except dependence on election. A * king of the Romans ' on 
his predecessor's decease immediately succeeded to the German throne 
without new election or coronation. To avoid the journey to Rome to 
receive the imperial crown MaximiUan I, 1493-15 19, obtained the pope's 
permission to use still another title, that of ' Emperor Elect,' so as to begin 
functioning as emperor at once upon succeeding to kingship. Ferdinand I, 
i556-'64, and his successors assumed this style as of right, no emperor after 
Frederic III, i440-'93, ever being crowned at Rome, though Charles V, 
i5i9-'56, was crowned emperor at Bologna. 

3 For the conquest of southern Italy by the Normans and the manner 
of its subjection to the pope, Duruy, 262 sqq.; Raumer, Hohenstanfen, I, 
Beilage i; Weber, IVcltgescJi., I, 609 sqq.; Palomes, Storia de li Nor- 
inanni in Sicilia [Palermo, 1883]; Delarc, Les N^ortJiands en Italic 
1883]. On its relation to the empire, §§ 19, 20. 

4 See§§ 17-20. 

^ See last §, n. 2; Bryce, 143. 

6 This Otho, the Great, was the last emperor to whom France ever 
acknowledged allegiance. 

■^ The parallel between these and France is not perfect, in that they, 
although at length in effect sovereign, always acknowledged a species of 
subordination to the empire, which France did not. 

§ 10 The Dukes 

Schulte, 185 sqq, 144-287. Secretati, Feodalite, 144 sqq. 

The rise of subordinate states, threatening and finally 
annulling the consequence of the empire, due partly to 
dukes' exercise of patronage, partly to their wealth, 
partly to royal favor, begins with the re-exaltation of 
the ducal office,^ soon after Karl the Great's death. In 
Germany the new duchies assume a quasi-national char- 



152 THE MEDIAEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

acter, including and dominating each its group of coun- 
ties. Properly and usually, jitrisdictio ^ did not belong 
to dukes as dukes but to the counts, who, in their char- 
acter as judges, held directly from the king. Yet a 
duke would often have ' rights of count ' over several 
of his counties. Till Frederic I, Barbarossa, 1152-90, 
there are nine regular duchies, of which Saxony, Bava- 
ria, Swabia, Franconia and Lotharingia, the most im- 
portant, betray in many respects the marks of separate 
states. Dukes (i) succeed to the functions of missi 
dominici yet without being at any time mere officers, 
(2) become hereditary, (3) appear as incipient kingSj 
ruling ^by God's grace,' ^ commanding the Heerbann, 
collecting royal revenues, holding highest courts, also 
diets which all the inferior dignitaries attend. Mar- 
graves, counts palatine and simple counts also became 
hereditary, and after the second reduction of the ducal 
power under the Hohenstaufen, more and more inde- 
pendent.* The other Fiirsten : the landgraves, Freiher- 
re7i^ archbishops, bishops and prince-abbots, followed the 
same upward course. All came in time to possess 
county, ducal and regalian ^ rights and the right of hav- 
ing lords as their vassals. Old exemptions ^ relating 
to their territories were removed, new ones forbidden, 
supreme jurisdiction allowed them, dwellers upon their 
territory as such, made their subjects. 

1 Duruy, 214 sq., also § 3, above, and Sickel, Wesen d. Volksherzog- 
thums, in v. Sybel's Zeitschrift, 1884, Heft 6. 

2 Here used in the technical sense of the Roman law, meaning the 
right to deliver formal judicial sentences. 

3 This was then, as it is now, the usual phrase to denote sovereignty. 
When the Fursten [n. 3] were confessed to be rulers ' by God's grace,' the . 
empire had become a mere presidency over sovereign states, which in all 



OF THE WEST 153 

its later years it was. Some assumed this style before others, those, i.e., 
farthest from the royal seat and power. 

■* A Furst was any vassal holding his estates, with right of Heerbann 
and of count, immediately from the emperor. In Latin he was named 
princeps, in French, prince, yet neither word has the definiteness of 
' Fiirs!^ since both, like our word ^ prince^ answer to the German '^Prinz^ 
as well as to Fiirst. So ^ Furst Bismarck,^ but * the Kronprinz.^ Weaken- 
ing of the dukes gave the inferior FUrsten all the freer scope to rise, and 
some of these became quite as hostile to the central power as the great 
dukes had been. On the humiliation of the dukes, see § i8. 

^ I.e., royal rights, chief among which were coining money and levy- 
ing tolls. 

6 Estates within duchies, margraviats, or count-districts, which had 
been given in fief to favorites of the emperor and made independent of 
the surrounding jurisdiction. Some of these were secular, others ecclesias- 
tical. Sometimes a princeling of this sort would be subject to duke but 
independent of count. The Franconian emperors made such exemptions, 
especially the ecclesiastical, systematically, to weaken their great feuda- 
tories. — Duruy, 272. 

§ II The Counts 

Same auth. as at last §. 

* Count' or 'Graf was originally a generic name for 
royal office. Karl the Great had counts palatine, counts 
of marches, travelling counts.^ By a more special, also 
early, application already noticed,^ the word signified 
the head of a district or canton,^ an officer charged 
primarily with jurisdiction but also with military com- 
mand. In the long evolution of the office, especially in 
the dissipation through exemptions ecclesiastical and 
other, of the cantonal system of administration, varie- 
ties of counts became still more numerous. The change 
exalted some of them but depressed the most. The 
palatinate v/as in nearly all cases lost in other dignities, 
although the Count Palatine of the Rhine became the 
first lay dignitary in the empire and an imperial vicar.* 



154 THE MEDI/EVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

Margraves maintained their early rank, about ducal, 
those of Austria and Brandenburg even surpassed the 
ducal rank. Landgraves were counts in the interior of 
the empire, with the same rank as margraves but less 
power. A few other counts extended their jurisdiction 
over several counties. Among counts of the lower or- 
der, such as the vassals of dukes, of ecclesiastical Fiirsten 
or of the higher counts, were burggraves,^ ruling towns 
and fortified chateaux, with jurisdiction direct from the 
emperor but subject in military things to duke, mar- 
grave or other immediate lord. The ecclesiastical Fiir- 
sten referred to were archbishops, bishops and high 
abbots. 

1 Pfalzgrafen, Markgrafen, Sendgrafen. ^ In German, "^ Gau^ 

2 At Ch. IV, § 15, n. 2. 4 See § 7, n. 4. 

^ The Hohenzollern were once mere burggraves of Nuremberg. Cf. 
§ 17, n. 4. Secretan connects 'Graf with ' greifen.'' 

§ 12 Empire and Church 

Bryce, ch. x. Milman, bk. vii. Gregorovius, vol. vi, 20 sqq. Prtdz., III. 

The centuries next succeeding Karl the Great de- 
veloped two radically antagonistic theories concerning 
the nature of the empire. The state-church theory 
though already centuries old we find most formally set 
forth in Dante's De MonarcJda. Dante seeks to prove 
that (i) rule over the world belongs of right to the Ro- 
man people and through them to the emperor,^ (2) such 
an empire is indispensable to the weal of human society, 
(3) the emperor's authority is directly from God, not 
from or through the pope. According to this concep- 
tion, borrowed from the idea of the church, as this had 
been from the original notion of Rome's rulership and 



OF THE WEST 1 55 

office on earth, the empire was the one indispensable, 
responsible mediator of humanity's corporate interests, 
itself a revelation of the Divine Spirit, the church being 
simply the empire's organ for the empire's own moral 
and spiritual work.^ It was conceived as incapable of 
cessation, as unbroken from Augustus and as thus ante- 
rior and superior to Christianity, which it had taken up 
into itself. "Many great minds, especially after, in the 
twelfth century, the study of Roman law was renewed, 
passionately espoused this view, nowise staggering at 
the palpable failure of both emperors and empire to con- 
form to the ideal. The papal or church-state theory, 
originating in Augustine's City of God,^ mightily fur- 
thered by the false-Isidorian decretals and slowly work- 
ing its way first to the consciousness of the church, then 
into the formulae of canon law, was in principle exactly 
the reverse of the above. It made the church supreme, 
God's sole institute and agent for working human wel- 
fare, the state only its functionary. It nowise set the 
state aside : so long as docile, exalted it rather. Yet in 
practice the empire could not but be degraded by its 
prevalence. Civil power was denounced as worldly, 
originating in sin, no more comparable with spiritual 
than body with soul. 

1 He explictly makes the whole earth the emperor's realm and every 
mortal his subject, denominating Henry VH rex mundi as well as minister 
dei. This strange treatise adduces arguments promiscuously from Homer, 
Aristotle, Juvenal, Ovid, Lucan, and the- Psalms. The author evidently 
regards it a telling point when he notices that scripture denominates as 
* the fulness of times ' the epoch of our Lord's advent, i.e., the period im- 
mediately succeeding the accession of Augustus and the establishment of 
the empire. Book II begins: 'Why do the heathen rage?' [Ps, II] as 
applicable to the Guelphs. Book III contains a refutation of the sun- 



156 THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

moon analogy [n. 3, below] in the observation that the moon is visible 
even in an eclipse of the sun. Observe that the state-church arrangement 
involves much more than the mere support of a given form of religion by 
the state, as in England to-day. 

- It was thus a ' holy empire,' an edict of Henry VII commanding as a 
' divine precept ' that ' every soul be subject to the Roman sovereign,' on 
whose sway * the order of the whole world reposes.' 

3 Ch. Ill, § 15, n. 5. This theory is best set forth by Thomas Aquinas. 
On the decretds, § 4, n. 6. Innocent III wrote : ' The Creator has fixed 
in the firmament of the Church universal two dignities. The greater, the 
papacy, governs souls as the sun by day. The less, the empire, governs 
bodies as the moon by night.' He locates both in the Church. The 
great question was, as Duruy puts it, * who, the heir of St. Peter or the 
heir of Augustus and Charlemagne, shall remain master of the world?' 



§ 13 Gregory Hildebrand 

Mihnan, bk. vii. Giesebrecht, bks. vi, vii. Prutz, III. Smith, Church dg. Mid. 
Ages, vol. ii. Boivden, Life of Gregory VII. Ratike, Weltgesch., VII. Lea, Sac- 
erdotal Celibacy. Geffcken, Church and State, i. Ibach, Kainpf zivischen Papst- 
thum 2t. Kdnigth2i7>i, etc. [1884]. Villemai>i and Gf rarer as in bibliog. 

Decisive clash between these two theories, both so 
exalting unity, the principle for which the middle age 
had a passion, was inevitable. The papal was first con- 
ceived in its full reach and majesty by Hildebrand,^ 
whom events conspired with his own matchless will, 
skill and daring, to aid in realizing it. History shows 
no more astounding transition than the upward leap of 
papal power at the death of Henry HI, a movement of 
which Hildebrand was soul. In his favor were (i) his 
long relation to the papacy, covering several pontificates 
before his own,^ (2) the new purity, dignity and power 
brought to the papacy by German popes under Henry 
1 11,^ (3) Henry IV's youth and vices, (4) the insubordi- 
nation of Henry's Saxon subjects,^ (5) Italian hatred 
of the empire, longing and brave effort for freedom. 



OF THE WEST 1 5/ 

(6) papal alliance with the Norman and Tuscan princi- 
palities.^ Tuscany especially, was an indispensable aid. 
Hildebrand's central purpose, as shown by the order 
of events in the struggle,^ was not to exalt the papacy 
but to reform the clergy. Worldliness, concubinage, 
simony, was universal. Henry's mistresses wore jewels 
from the church's caskets. Each valuable church dig- 
nity was sold to the highest bidder. Benedict IX'' 
bartered the papal office itself. Leo IX found that 
thorough reform at once would leave Rome without a 
priest. As indispensable to the needed radical change, 
Hildebrand resolved to make the entire clergy responsi- 
ble in all respects to an independent pope, totally abol- 
ishing the lay investiture of clerks.^ In withstanding 
this, Henry was supported by an anti-reform party 
among the clergy throughout Europe, also by most of 
the powerful nobles of Rome and Lombardy. The 
same great Roman families^ who had cursed Henry III 
allied themselves ardently with his son to annihilate 
Hildebrand. 

1 Hildebrand was a carpenter's son. Gregorovius, judging by the 
name, thinks him to have been of Lombard [Teutonic] stock. We have 
the autographs ' Yldibrandtis ' and * Heldebrandus,' as v^'ell as the con- 
temporary spellings \Ildebrandus^ and ^ Oldeprandus^ H.'s pontificate 
extended from April 22, 1073 to May 25, 1085. 

2 He was chaplain to Gregory VI, i045-'6, went to Germany with 
Clement II, '46-'8, and came back to Rome with Leo IX, '48-'54. Under 
Stephen IX, '57-'8, he was Archdeacon. He had been Chancellor or Sec- 
retary of State to five different popes. Cf. Neander, III, 380 sqq. 

^ Although the reforming popes hitherto had come from Germany, the 
Abbey of Cluny [Clugni] in France was now the centre of the reform party 
in the church. Hildebrand had been educated there, and from there 
came, after him, Popes Urban II, 1087-99, inspirer of the First Crusade, 
and Paschal II, 1099-1118. 



158 THE MEDIiEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

* This is discussed by Bruno, de bello Saxonico [n. 6, below]. 

5 The popes had held the suzerainty over Norman Italy since Leo IX, 
l048-'54, to whom, after having conquered him in arms, they yet surren- 
dered as vassals [§ 9, n. 3]. Beatrice, heiress of Tuscany, herself a devoted 
papist, married for second husband Godfrey of Lothringen [Lorraine], who 
was a rebel against imperial authority and hence a natural ally of Gregory. 
Godfrey's son married Mathilda, Beatrice's daughter, perpetuating the 
friendliness of Tuscany to the holy see. Mathilda willed thereto her 
entire lands, amounting to a quarter of Italy. It was partly a fief of the 
empire, partly allodial [Ch. VI, § 4, n. 5]. 

6 He attacks clerical vices first [§ 15]. Had he wished power he 
M'ould have cemented the clergy to himself before assailing Henry. On 
this controversy of so thrilling interest the chief original sources are : For 
Henry, against Gregory: Benno [cardinal], Vita Hildehrandi [bitter 
and indecent]; Benzo [bishop of Alba], Panegyrictis in Imp. Henricttin 
IV ; Waltram [bp. of Naumburg], liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda ; 
Sigebert of Gefubloux, Chronicon, and other writings ; Epistola ctcjiis- 
dam, by an unknown writer, upon Gregory's too severe procedure against 
married priests; Vita Henrici IV [of unknown authorship]. For 
Gregory, against Henry : Bruno, de bello Saxonico [the most passion- 
ate of all]; Bernold, Chronicon ; Bardo, Vita Anselmi [Anselm was 
bishop of Lucca, nephew and successor of Alexander II, and one of Grego- 
ry's intimates. Bardo incorporates much from Anselm's own pen] ; Placi- 
diis [prior of Nonantola], Liber de honor e ecclesiae ; Bonizo [bp. of Sutri], 
Liber ad amicnm. [For a fuller notice, see Wattenbach, II, 167 sqq.; 
also Giesebrecht, III and IV. Bruno and the Vita Henrici exist in 
Pertz's hand-edition, very cheap and convenient. Nearly all are in his 
Monumenta. Cf. in Rev. d. d. Mondes, Ap. & Mai, 1873.] 

■^ On this base pope, ' more childish than Caligula, as wicked as Elaga- 
balus,' Milman, vol. iii, 229 sqq., Gregorovius, IV, 75 sqq. 

^ That is, the investiture of the bishops, archbishops and abbots of the 
empire, even with the ring and staff, those symbols of spiritual office, was 
till Hildebrand the act of the emperor, a layman. 

^ These aristocrats with the cities in the north had made the strength 
of the Guelph party in Italy [§ 17]. Out of hatred to Hildebrand they 
now turn Ghibelline. A few Roman nobles, however, favor the pope. 
Had clerical marriage or concubinage been permitted, church offices 
would have become hereditary in these and such families, and feudalism 
would have cursed the church as it did civil life. Not likely that Gregory 
or any of the popes who aided the cities were animated by zeal for 
freedom or for a united Italy. 



of the west 159 

§ 14 The Church and Feudalism 

Hallam, ch. vii, pt. i. Schitlte, 125 sqq., 188. Mzlman, vol. ii, 484 sqq. Nitzsck, 
bd. ii, 16-58. 

The eleventh century saw church and clergy like the 
rest of society, in the toils of the feudal system. One- 
fifth of France, one-third of Germany was ecclesiastical 
land, ruled, subject to the monarch alone, by arch- 
bishops, bishops and abbots, who had become invested 
with rights of duke and of count, and exercised these as 
suzerains over the entire population of their domains. 
In their secular character these church officials were 
usually represented by lay advocates, who bore to them 
the relation sometimes of patrons, more sometimes of 
regular vassals.^ The emperor himself was patron of 
numberless abbeys, as he was suzerain of all arch- 
bishops and bishops, whom, he invested not only with 
ring and staff but as his liege men in the ordinary tem- 
poral fashion. Controlling their religious influence 
among the people through their temporal dependence 
on him,- he used the bishops as his chief support against 
insubordinate dukes. Apart from this, such was then 
the lack of clear distinction between spiritual and tem- 
poral authority and between feudal and proper political 
sovereignty, that the execution of Gregory's programme 
must have threatened the very existence of civil society. 
It would have erected innumerable scattered fragments 
taken from all the European states into a single ecclesi- 
astical state subject to Rome.^ 

1 Many were vassals in form, patrons in fact, much the relation 
now held by Austria to Turkey in respect to Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
See Happ, De advocatia ecclesiastica [Bonn, 1870]. A fief could be 



l60 THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

accepted from an ecclesiastic without disgrace by a powerful count or 
duke who would have disdained the same from his lay neighbor. The 
four great honorary officers of the emperor: marshal, seneschal, etc., filled 
corresponding posts in the chapter of the bishop of Bamberg. The prince- 
Abbey of Fulda had as its vassals the Archduke of Austria, the Dukes of 
Bavaria and Saxony, the Landgraves of Thuringia and Hesse, with a 
crowd of counts and several imperial cities, as Frankfort and Muhlhausen. 
The emperor even, held the seigniory of Wimpfen as a fief of the diocese 
of Worms. — Secretan. 

2 Milman, bk. vii, chaps, i, iii. 



§ 15 To Canossa 

Milmaji, VII, ii. Pruiz, III. He/ele, in T'libinger Quartalschr., 1861. Lea [in 
Studies], 'Excommunication.' Raiivier, bk. ii. Nitzsch, bd. ii, 59-112. 

Hildebrand, the greatest mind and shrewdest politi- 
cian of his age, proceeded with combined boldness and 
skill. Laws already existing against the great clerical 
vices he enforced with unprecedented rigor, incurring 
hostility in a way and to a degree speaking for the 
purity of his aim. His first revolutionary act was the 
emancipation of papal elections.^ The emperors, es- 
pecially Henry HI, had insisted on having decisive 
voice in these. An adroitly worded decree^ of Nicholas 
n, 1059, iTi3.de a college of cardinals plenipotentiary for 
this business, the emperor to have the right even of 
confirmation only as a personal concession. Further 
fine diplomacy coupled with good fortune, procured the 
election and confirmation, under this new law, of Alex- 
ander H as pope. The bitter strife over this election^ 
seems to have decided Hildebrand. Himself elected 
pope and securely confirmed, he issues the renowned 
decree of 1075, abrogating lay investiture. Even after 
this for a time, king is submissive, pope gracious. Soon 



OF THE WEST l6l 

the mood of both changes, and Hildebrand summons 
Henry, guilty among much else of sheltering deposed 
bishops, to Rome to answer for his sins. To the king's 
idle pretence of deposing him * Hildebrand replies with 
a bull excommunicating Henry and placing his kingdom 
under interdict. The king was doomed. Staunchest 
friends deserted him with loathing. The Diet of Tribur, 
October, 1066, legislating for the realm, reduced him to 
the estate of a private man and resolved to elect a new 
king if the next February 25th found Henry unabsolved. 
Crossing the Alps at the risk of his life and hastening 
to Canossa the lord of the empire prostrates himself an 
abject penitent before the Vicar of Christ, who at last 
deigns to grant him absolution.^ 

1 On the mode, original and modern, of electing pope, Fisher, Discus- 
sions, 141 sqq. The pope, as bishop of the Roman church, which he still 
remains, was like all bishops for centuries elected popularly. Karl, Otho 
and all the really powerful emperors interfered more or less with this free 
Roman election, confidently naming candidates as they did for ordinary 
bishoprics. The cardinals, who still remain as by the decree of 1059, the 
electors, are the presbyters and deacons of the Roman church with the 
bishops of the suburban churches offshoots of the Roman. All, wherever 
resident, are thus officials of that church. The full college numbers 70 : 
viz. 6 bishops, 50 priests, 14 xleacons. The pope appoints them. So far 
as he is a temporal sovereign they are temporal princes, yet their office is 
mainly ecclesiastical, and involves vast fields of church administration 
aside from electing pope. In this their most solemn function they are to 
give the preference to candidates from the Roman church itself. Cardi- 
nals did not at first wear purple, nor did the custom of shutting them up 
in conclave to elect the pope arise till Gregory X, I2'ji-'j6. 

^ The cardinal bishops were to have the initiative, but must secure the 
consent of the cardinal priests and deacons. * Applause ' was expected 
from the laity as of course, and the election was to * save the honor and 
reverence due to Henry, now king, future emperor.' Under this rule 
Hildebrand's own election was confirmed by Henry IV himself, but it was 
the last intervention of the kind that ever occurred. See Gregorovius, vol. 
iv, 112 sqq. 



l62 THE MEDIAEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

3 Some German and Lombard prelates who favored clerical marriage 
[nearly every clergyman in the Milan diocese did] assembled in Basle, 
annulled Alexander's election after it had occurred, and chose Cadalous, 
bishop of Parma, as Honorius II, in his stead. How the party of Gregory 
and Alexander felt toward Honorius is evinced by Peter Demiani, who 
denounces Honorius as ' waster of the church, root of sin, devil's herald, 
apostle of Antichrist, an arrow from Satan's bow, the shipwreck of all 
purity, the man of dung, the dung of the century, fodder for hell, an 
abominable, wriggling worm.' Benzo in turn wrote of Alexander : 

' Sed Prandelli Asina7ider, asimis haereticus, 

' Congregavit Patarifws ex viis et sepibiis, 

' Et replevit totam terravi urticis et vepribus.^ 

* Patarini ' meant ' ragamuffins.' 

* The form was gone through at Henry's instance by a synod at Worms 
in 1076, Henry feeling strong now through his great victory over the 
Saxons at Langensalza, June 9, 1075. His letter conveying the decree, 
after accusing the pope of numberless and nameless crimes, ended : ' We, 
Plenry, by the grace of God king, with all the bishops of our realm, com- 
mand thee, Down, down.' Gregory's anathema ran as follows : ' St. Peter, 
Prince of the Apostles, incline Thine ear unto us and hear us. Thy servant, 
whom from childhood Thou hast nourished and protected even to this 
day against the ungodly. Thou and my Lady the Mother of God, and 
Thy Brother, St. Paul, — prove to me that Thy holy Roman Church hath 
drawn me against my will to its rudder, "and that I have not risen up like 
a robber to Thy seat. Rather would I have been a pilgrim my whole life 
long than have snatched to myself Thy chair on account of temporal glory 
and a worldly mind. And therefore do I believe it to proceed from Thy 
grace and not from my action, when it pleased and pleaseth Thee that 
the Christian people specially entrusted to Thee should hearken to me in 
virtue of the mediatorship entrusted to me; and through Thy intercession 
hath power been sent me from God to bind and to loose on earth and in 
heaven. Trusting in this, I, in the name of Almighty God, the Father, 
the Son and the H-oly Ghost, interdict to King Henry, son of Emperor 
Henry, the government of the entire German and Italian realm. Because 
with unheard-of pride he hath lifted himself up against Thy Church, I 
absolve all Christians from the bond of their oath to him, and forbid them 
to serve him any longer as king. For it is fitting that he who will touch 
the dignity of Thy Church should lose his own. And since he hath dis- 
dained to obey like a Christian and hath not returned to God Whom he 
deserted, but on the contrary hath been communing with the excommuni- 



OF THE WEST 163 

cate, and by his striving to rend the Church hath separated himself from 
her, so I bind him in Thy stead with the bond of the anathema, that all 
people may know and feel that Thou art Peter, and that upon this Rock 
the Son of the Living God hath built his Church, against which the gates 
of hell cannot prevail.' 

5 Hefele strips off the exaggerations with which this memorable trans- 
action is commonly recounted. Henry did not wait at the castle door 
* three days and nights,' nor even three days, but a few hours each day. 
Not in the snow but under cover. Not ^ en chemise'' [Michelet] or *clad 
only in the thin, white linen dress of the penitent' [Milman], but in a 
penitent's shirt over other clothing. Nor did the pope postpone audience 
in order to show his power and humble the king, but because he had 
solemnly referred Henry's case to Augsburg, whither himself was now 
journeying to meet Henry and the German princes together, and feared to 
adjudicate it in Italy. He at last so far relented as to absolve the king 
but did not restore the kingdom. As to penance, many a king and 
emperor had done it: Otho HI, Henry II, even Otho I. Henry HI and, 
later, St, Louis, suffered themselves to be publicly flogged. In view of 
Waltram's silence touching it, Hefele discredits the famous * hostia-scene,' 
in which Gregory is said to have prayed to be, if guilty, stricken dead as 
he ate the wafer, and to have vainly challenged Henry to the same 
ordeal. 

§ 16 The Concordat of Worms, 1122 

Milman, VII, iii-v, VIII, i-iii. Giesebrecht, bk. viii. Hefele, as at § 15. Rauiner, 
bk. ii. Duruy, ch. xvii. Prutz, III, v. Nitzsch, bd. ii, 113-156. 

From the crushing blow received at Canossa the em- 
pire never recovered either absolutely or in comparison 
with the papacy. In the desperate war that ensued, 
Henry IV ^ and Henry V with their rival popes both 
scored brilliant victories over the papists with their rival 
emperors, but these were not permanent. If Hilde- 
brand expired as an exile at Salerno,^ his successors in- 
herited his spirit and policy. Urban II excommunicated 
Philip^ I of France. Henry IV died a beggar, under 
the ban, which Gregory had renewed in 1080. Calixtus 



164 THE MEDIiEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

II sat as a court of last resort for kings.* The crusades, 
now beginning, enormously increased papal power.^ By 
the Concordat of Worms, 1122, Henry V, who at his 
imperial coronation had seemed not less absolute than 
his grandfather,^ after passing ten years excommunicate, 
bowing to Calixtus, gave up investiture by ring and 
staff, condemned simony and consented to the canonical 
election and free consecration of bishops. On the other 
hand the outcome for the papacy fell far short of the 
majestic world-monarchy which the great Hildebrand 
had planned.'^ Ecclesiastics were still to acquire their 
principalities ^ and all temporal rights at the touch of 
the royal sceptre, and faithfully to fulfil to the emperor 
every obligation incident to their secular status. 

^ The interdict was never removed and the ban was pronounced afresh 
in 1080; yet Henry fully reconquered the headship of Germany, vanquish- 
ing Rudolf, who had been chosen against him, subdued his Italian 
kingdom though less thoroughly, created Antipope Clement III, who 
crowned him emperor, and even became master of Rome. His papal foes 
ruined him at last by procuring the rebellion of his sons, first Conrad, then 
Henry [V]. Friendless, even hungry, he was left to beg in vain place in 
the choir of the church of the Virgin in Spires, founded by himself. He had 
been dead five years ere his body was allowed rest in consecrated earth. 

2 His last words, * I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, there- 
fore I die in exile,' betray at once the man's conscious integrity and his 
egotism. 

3 For the uncanonical divorce of his own wife and the seduction of 
another man's. 

* At Rheims, 1119, where Louis the Fat, of France, complained of 
Henry I of England for lack of allegiance as Duke of Normandy and for 
various other faults, not one of them of an ecclesiastical nature. 

5 See last § but one in Ch. VII. 

^ With the enthusiastic and nearly entire allegiance of Germany and 
Italy he visited Rome and forced Paschal II to crown him emperor. We 
notice that excommunication shook his authority far less than it had his 
father's. 



OF THE WEST I65 

"^ See Milman, bk. vii, chaps, i, iii. 

^ Except such as might have been conferred by the papacy itself; for 
the papacy had large temporalities to bestow in different lands, over and 
above its spiritual offices. 



§ 17 GUELPH AND GhIBELLINE 

Hallam, ch. v. Durtty, ch. xviii. Gi'esebrecht, vol. iv. Rauvier^ I, ii, 4 and 5. 
Nitzsch, bd. ii, 161-286. May, Democracy in Europe, ch. vii. 

Popes found willing and mighty helpers in the great 
imperial vassals, bent on independence and enlarged 
possessions. Under Henry IV and his son, 1056-1125, 
Swabia was often in revolt, Saxony almost continuously. 
Lothar III, 1125-37, by allying himself with Henry 
the Proud,^ of the Guelph family of Bavarian dukes, and 
investing him with Saxony also, enrages Swabia, which, 
in Conrad III, 1138-52, of the brilliant Hohenstau- 
fen or Ghibelline ^ line, next fills the imperial throne. 
Henry, inheriting from Lothar the papal fief of Tus- 
cany ^ and thus lord from the Tiber to the Baltic, rebels 
against Conrad and is put to the ban, yet only with 
utmost difficulty stripped of his duchies. His son, 
Henry the Lion, recovers these indeed, but narrowed 
and degraded. Saxony by the loss of Brandenburg,^ 
Bavaria by that of Austria.^ Lombard cities always 
made common cause with German rebels, as popes 
with both, the entire party of the empire's foes thus 
formed coming to be called * Guelphs,' ' Ghibellines ' in 
like manner specifying all the empire's friends, Italian 
as well as German. The names, used in Germany to 
this day,^ had strongest life in Italy, where they became 
the watchwords respectively of independence from Ger- 
many and of subjection thereto. -^ 



1 66 THE MEDIAEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

1 Henry the Proud had married Lothar's daughter and expected 
ahnost of course to be chosen emperor, as would have occurred had not 
the Fursten been jealous of his already enormous power. 

2 ' Guelph ' and ' Ghibelline ' are the Italianized forms of ' Welf ' and 
* Waiblingen.' The latter are usually [the view is now contested] thought 
to have been first used as party words at the battle of Weinsberg, 1140 
\_Hie Welf! Hie Waibling !\ where Count Welf, brother of Henry the 
Proud [died 1139], commanded against Duke Frederic of Swabia [Hoh- 
enstaufen], whose seat was the castle of Waiblingen. The Brunswick or 
Hanoverian line of English monarchs are descended from Henry Proud, 
through Henry the Lion, Otho IV, and Otho ' the Infant.' 

^ Including all the estates willed by Mathilda to the holy see, as the 
duchy of Spoleto and the marches of Ancona, Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, 
and a few minor tracts. Cf. § 12, n. 5. 

* The Mark of Brandenburg was carved from the old duchy of Saxony 
in 1 142 and given to Albert the Bear as an immediate fief of the empire. 
He added to it the land between the Elbe and Oder mouths. His heirs 
retained the estate till 1320, when it passed to the house of Bavaria. 
Afterwards Luxemburg held it. In 141 7 Emperor Sigismund sold it to 
the Hohenzollern, fathers of the present reigning house of Prussia, of 
which kingdom it formed the germ. 

^ Gertrude, widow of Henry Proud, married Henry Jasomirgott [so 
named from his incessant oath, Ja, so mir Gott helfe'], margrave of 
Austria, who thus became seized of Bavaria. Frederic Barbarossa restored 
this duchy to Henry the Lion, pacifying Jasomirgott by adding Styria to 
his margraviat and erecting the whole into the independent duchy of 
Austria, with special privileges. The particular history of Austria as well 
as of Prussia begins now. Otho I had made it a margraviat [Ostmark] 
955, in favor of the Babenberg family, who held it till 1246. It then 
passed in succession to Frederic II and to the houses of Baden, Bohemia 
and Hapsburg [1282], the last still holding it, though in the female or 
Lorraine line since 1740 [§ 6, n. 4]. 

6 For the foes and the friends of the present German empire. Thus 
the royal house of Hannover are Guelphs politically and not by blood 
alone. 

■^ While the Italian republics were under the presidency of Charles 
d'Anjou, of Naples [see last § of this Ch.] ' Ghibelline ' named the foes 
of this presidency, the friends of liberty. Sismondi, Rep. It., ch. xxii. 



OF THE WEST 1 6/ 

§ 1 8 Frederic I 

Milman, VIII, vii. Duruy, 275 sqq. Giesebrecht, bk. x. Pruiz, IV, 7^7^//, Storz'a 
della lega lombarda [1886J. Sismondi, I, viii, ix. Nitzsch, bd. ii, last ch. 
Raumer, bk. iv. 

After the concordat of 1122 the quarrel slumbered. 
Lothar had by explicit word and by humiliating deed ^ 
confessed himself pope's vassal. It proved a truce 
only. The powerful Frederic Barbarossa, 1152-90, 
swore to restore the empire to its old eminence, over the 
pope and Italy, his chief spur to such assumption being 
the new study of Roman law. Imperial rights as ex- 
pounded from Justinian by the jurisconsults of Bologna, 
Frederic ascribed without modification to himself.^ This 
Italian policy, justifiable only technically, led him to 
outrageous tyranny and cruelty. What gives peculiar 
interest to this contest is the brilliant action of those 
republics which now dotted the Italian peninsula from 
the Alps to Benevento, restoring to a brief and beau- 
tiful life the ruins of the Roman municipal regime.^ 
The great modern struggle for liberty now begins, 
curiously identified in this its earliest stage with that of 
papal ambition. Adrian IV and Alexander III, with 
better reason, advanced claims identical with Hilde- 
brand's as well as in the same proud tone. Alexander, 
suzerain of Sicily, Naples, and Tuscany, recognized by 
the kings of France and England and supported by the 
iron battalions of the Lombard League, overbore even 
the arms and energy of Frederic. Escaping with bare 
life from the battle-field of Legnano, 11 76, the emperor, 
sacrificing his own pope, submits to Alexander.^ By 
the Treaty of Constance,^ 1183, the pope was again 



1 68 THE MEDIiEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

recognized as the suzerain of Tuscany, and practical 
independence granted to the republics, the emperor re- 
taining the mere right to confirm their consuls and to 
maintain in each a court of appeal for certain causes. 
But what Frederic lost in Italy he gained in his German 
kingdom, by the new and firm authority which his divis- 
ion and new disposition of the great duchies gave to 
his government there. Henry the Lion, for desertion 
before Legnano and subsequent treason, was dispos- 
sessed, save of Brunswick and Liineburg, Bavaria pass- 
ing to Otho von Wittelsbach,^ Bernard, son of Albert 
the Bear, becoming duke of Saxony, which had lost 
Westphalia to the archbishopric of Cologne. 

1 He had held Pope Innocent II's stirrup for him to mount, understood 
to be a menial service. 

2 He also caused certain of his own edicts to be incorporated in the 
corpus iuris civilis. 

^ Duruy, 274, Each had its consuls: Milan, 12, Genoa 6, Florence 4, 
Pisa 6, etc., usually with both executive and judicial powers. Generally 
also a sort of senate [credenza] assisted them. But the popular assembly 
was sovereign legislature as well as court of last resort. Under Arnold of 
Brescia, for a brief time from 1144, Rome formed such a republic. Fred- 
eric put down this Roman republic, delivering Arnold to Pope Adrian IV 
to be burned, but was so severe that Adrian soon turned against him. — 
Milman, VIII, vi. Cf. Ch. IV, § 20, n. 3. 

* They met in San Marco, Venice. Schnorr has a cartoon of the 
scene. It may be seen in the Dresden Johanneum, also in the Ducal 
Palace at Venice. Cf. Childe Harold, hist'l n. 4. 

^ The magna charta of the Italian republics. See Duruy, 279. 

^ Cf. § 8, n. 5. This re-arrangement propped the emperor's power 
only temporarily however. The increased number of the immediate vas- 
sals, though they were feebler, placed the central authority in even 
greater danger than before. Cf. § 20, n. 6. 



OF THE WEST 1 69 

§ 19 Frederic II 

Oliphant, Frederic II. Milman, bks, ix, x. Duruy, 282 sqq. Sismondi, II, v-xi, 
Freematt, Historical Essays, iii ser. Nitzsch, bd. iii, 10-100. Prutz, V. Rati- 
mer, vol. iii. Hoeffer, Kaiser Friedrich II [a pamphlet]. 

The great struggle had still a third period, the most 
confused and terrific as well as the most decisive of all. 
Henry VI, by marriage with the Norman Princess Con- 
stantia of Naples, virtually incorporated the kingdom 
of the Two Sicilies ^ with the empire, traversing the 
policy of the holy see and endangering its independence. 
The papacy was now at high meridian, Innocent III in 
both claim and fact king of kings. ^ In order to sepa- 
rate Italy from the empire, under the bold pretence of 
examining and crowning emperors if worthy or rejecting 
them if unworthy, he raised to the throne the Guelph, 
Otho IV, against the Ghibelline Philip. But when 
Otho defied him, and, ignoring the Treaty of Constance, 
claimed suzerainty over Tuscany and Naples, Innocent 
deposed him in favor of Frederic II. It was stipulated 
that the latter should cede his hereditary kingdom of the 
Sicilies to his son. Frederic, in the arts of politics 
brilliant pupil of Innocent himself, found means to 
evade this, keeping his lands united and encircling 
Rome with imperial domains. To break this wall, pope 
must crush emperor. Excuses were ready. Besides 
mockery of pope's claim to world-suzerainty, Gregory IX 
charged ^ upon Frederic rebellion and breach of trust as 
papal fief -holder of the Sicilies, alliance with Saracens, 
neglect of vow in not earlier embarking as crusader, 
contempt of ecclesiastical discipline, and infidelity. 
Frederic's two bloody but triumphant campaigns, (i) to 



lyO THE MEDIiEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

the Peace of San Germano, 1230, and (2) to Gregory's 
death, 1241, added splendid fame as a soldier to the re- 
nown which this wonder of the world already possessed 
as poet, philosopher and theologian. In (i) he entirely 
reduced the great North Italian revolt which Gregory 
had instigated during Frederic's crusade/ in (2) a re- 
bellion of his own son allied with the new Lombard 
League. Gregory died in despair. The papacy was 
throttled and for a moment quivered as in death-throes. 

1 I.e., Naples and Sicily. Henry VI was Frederic Barbarossa's son, 
Frederic IPs father. Lower Italy was thus virtually brought into the 
empire, though never constitutionally. Mark the confusion. As resident 
and bishop of Rome the pope was a subject [if not fief-holder] of the 
empire. On the other hand, as possessor of Naples and Sicily, inheriting 
from the Norman kings there, Frederic was of course the pope's vassal, 
besides being what every Christian monarch professed to be, subject to 
the pope as Christ's vicar and in that sense world-suzerain. 

2 Schulte, 205; Duruy, 280, 3S5; Creighton, I, 19 sqq. Innocent III 
was the pope who, to discipline King John of England, authorized Philip 
Augustus of France to invade John's kingdom, and who, when John had 
basely submitted, sought to annul the Great Charter. 

^ Nearly all these indictments -were as true as some of them were 
grave. From the point of view of the then orthodoxy Frederic was cer- 
tainly an infidel. He was alleged and believed to have expressed the sen- 
timent that the world had been deceived by three impostors, Moses, Christ 
and Mohammed. Frederic II alone of all the imperial line Dante leaves 
in hell. — Inferno, x, 119. Yet he put forth edict after edict against here- 
tics and asseverated his orthodoxy to the last. It would, indeed, seem 
that his first excommunication, for not persisting in the crusading-voyage 
which he had begun, was unjust. He was driven back by a tempest, him- 
self and men ill. The pope's main hostility to Frederic was political, 
springing from the determination to keep the Sicilies separate from the 
empire, contrary to Frederic's will. Hence Gregory would not desert the 
Lombard League. 

* Frederic did at length go as crusader [Ch. VII, § 15] only to be 
balked at every turn by the pope's minions. Matthew of Paris says that 
the Templars of the Holy Land made overtures to the sultan of Egypt to 



OF THE WEST I/I 

betray Frederic to him, but that the Mohammedan ruler refused partner- 
ship in such treachery. He and Frederic became warm friends, and the 
cession of Jerusalem was by him. It grieved the knights that the Mussul- 
mans were allowed to retain a mosque on the site of Solomon's temple, 
with the privileges of living and visiting in Jerusalem and being tried 
there by judges of their own, Antioch, with Tripoli and its other depend- 
encies, had not been included in the ten years' truce, Frederic had to 
crown himself king of Jerusalem [his seventh crown], as no ecclesiastic 
M^ould perform the ceremony. Returning, Frederic found his son and the 
powerful Lombard League in revolt, and conquered both in the great vic- 
tory of Corte Nuova, 1237, Gregory now fought him with redoubled 
energy. To win sympathy in Europe he called a council at the Lateran 
in Rome for 1241, A naval victory over the Genoese at Meloria in that 
year threw nearly all the delegates [proceeding by sea] into the emperor's 
hands. The aged Gregory died from this reverse. 



§ 20 Fall of the Hohenstaufen 

Hallmn, ch. iii. Duruy, 284 sqq. Milnian, X, iv, v. Bryce, xiii. Prutz, V, Free- 
ma7t, Historical Essays [i ser.] xi, Nitzsch, bd. iii, 101-139. Rantner, vol. iii. 

Suddenly fortune changed. From Gregory's death 
to his own in 1250, incessant reverse whelmed Frederic. 
Treason was all about him. Thrice excommunicate, 
deserted by old friends, Christian kings either against 
him or too listless to aid,^ even his genius, quenchless 
energy and Saracen ^ supports were vain. He indeed 
fought with vigor to the last, dying unconquered. Still 
was it already clear, such was now the moral weight of 
the papal office and the horror of Frederic as an un- 
believer, that Innocent IV, the new pope, even in exile 
as he was, must finally prevail. The result was assured 
and greatly hastened by the emperor's death. The 
Guelphs at last rose to the ascendant. From this mo- 
ment the empire declined in significance,^ Conrad IV, 
who held it till his death, 1254, was the last Caesar 



1/2 THE MEDIEVAL ROMAN EMPIRE 

of the Swabian line, the race itself presently dying out. 
Conradin, his son, who had gone to help his uncle. King 
Manfred, in Naples against Charles d'Anjou, the pope's 
newly chosen vassal there, perished on the scaffold in 
1268. Italy and Burgundy lost, the empire retained 
after the Interregnum only the vocation, without the 
ancient power, of a German kingdom. The house of 
France ^ now succeeds to the preponderance of the em- 
perors, and with it the church, mighty through its rev- 
enues, arrogant from the rising study of canon law,^ 
will next have to struggle. 

1 The intelligent laity in all Europe sympathized to a great extent with 
Frederic. So devoted a churchman as St. Louis expostulated with Inno- 
cent IV for his high assumption. For a strong resolution of the French 
barons in the same sense, Martin, Hist, de France, IV, 209 sq. Robert 
d'Artois, St. Louis's brother, refused the imperial crown offered him by 
Gregory IX, reproaching this pontiff with the wish to trample all mon- 
archs under his feet. Yet Charles d'Anjou accepted the Sicilies. 

2 It was only by the aid of Saracens, who of course cared nothing for 
the pope's interdict, that Frederic was enabled to hold out so long. His 
resort to such allies naturally enraged popes all the more, as calculated to 
open the way for those infidels to a permanent footing in Christendom. 

^ Cf. § 6. The interregnum is sometimes reckoned from Frederic's d., 
sometimes from Conrad's. Some M^riters end it in 1257, with the election 
of Richard of Cornwall, but as neither he nor his rival, Alphonso of 
Castile, ever reigned, we protract the interregnum to the election of 
Rudolf, 1273. See Bryce, 212. Not only was the interregnum itself a 
dreadful time, but so close an approach to out and out independence had 
been yielded by Frederic II to his great German vassals that it was hence- 
forth impossible for even great men, being emperors, to wield the power 
of a Barbarossa, a Henry the Black or an Otho. 

* See later §§ of next Ch. Monarchy was now becoming emphatically 
dominant in France itself, just as it was losing its hold in the empire. In 
addition to this the passing of Naples and Sicily under French rule could 
not but lend distinction to the French name and increase French influence 
in world-affairs. Jealousy resulted. Peter III of Aragon, who had mar- 



OF THE WEST 1/3 

ried Constantia, Manfred's daughter, recovers Sicily, occasioning the 
'Sicilian Vespers' Mar, 30, 1282. See Duruy, 479; Sismondi, Rep It., 
ch. xxii; Amari, H. of the W. of the Sic. Vespers, 3 v.; Martin, IV, 
319 sqq. The Sicilians had unanimously favored Conradin and for that 
reason were oppressed by the French. Michael Palaeologus, eastern 
emperor, aided Peter with money, knowing that Charles had designs on 
his realm. Even Pope Nicholas III, i277-'8i, had been in the league 
against Charles. Nearly every Frenchman in Sicily was massacred. 
From Peter's conquest till 1295 Sicily was connected directly with Aragon, 
thence till 1410 under domestic monarchs of the Aragon house, then again 
under Aragon [Ferdinand the Just], whose King Alphonso V conquers 
Naples in 1442, thus again uniting Naples with Sicily. At his death, 1458, 
they were parted, his brother John becoming king of Aragon and Sicily, 
while his natural son, Ferdinand, assumed the crown of Naples, his line 
going out at the new French conquest by Louis XII of France in 1501, 
Ferdinand the Catholic's conquest of Naples, 1505, brought Naples afresh 
under the same rule with Sicily, as they remained till 1707. Soon after 
this, in the W. of the Spanish Succession, Austria secured possession of 
both, ceding Sicily to Savoy in 17 13. Spain conquered the Island once 
more in 1718, uniting it with Naples in 1720. In 1735, Don Carlos, 
younger son of the Bourbon Philip V of Spain, was crowned king of the 
Two Sicilies, his line reigning, except during the French occupation 
[1806-15 : Joseph Bonaparte King of Naples 2 years, Murat 7] till 186 1, 
when Sicily became part of the present kingdom of Italy. 

5 Canon law began to have its present form, as a special system and 
study, separate from the civil, in the time of Gregory IX. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER VI 

* Feudalism ' and ' France ' in Encyc. Brit. The Student's France. 
Hallam, Milman, Duruy, Guizot [Civ. in Europe, iv, and Civ. in Fr., 
2d Course, are, with Hallam, ch. ii, the best lit. in Eng. on feudalism], 
Stille, Maitland, Michelet and Prutz as in last Bibliog. Secretan, 
Essai stir la feodalile ** [best single work on feudalism]. Roth, Bene- 
ficiahvesen ; ** Feudalitdt u. Unterthanenverband.^'^ Lehuerou, In- 
stitutions Merovingiennes ; do. Carolingiennes. Giraxid, Droit fran^ais 
au moyen age, 2 v. Perreciot, Personnes et terres dans les Ganles, 3 v. 
Desmaze, Parlement de Paris. Bancroft [Jane M.], Parliament of Paris, 
etc. [dissertation]. Kitchin, H. of Fr., bks. iii, iv. Sistnondi, Hist, des 
Fran^ais, 2 v. Masson, St. Louis and the 13th Century [Ep. of Fr. H.]. 
Stubbs, Const'l H. of Eng., esp. ch. ix. De Coulanges, Institutions 
politques de Vancienne Fr.; Etudes sur quelques probleines d''hist.; les 
origines du regime feodal \_Pev. d. d. Alondes, 1872, 1874]. Luchaire, 
Hist, des institutions de Fr., etc. [under first 4 Capetians], 2 v. Flach, 
Les origines de Vancienne Fr., le regime seigneurial [ix & x cent. : vol. 
i, 1886]. Deloche, La trtistis et V antrustion royal sous les deux pre- 
mieres races."^* Clark, H. of Knighthood, 2 v. Mills, do. of Chivalry, 
2 v. "PdirdiQssviS, Loi salique. Maine, Anc. Law;** Village Communi- 
ties;** Early Law and Custom.** Seignobos, Regime fhdal en Bour- 
gogne, etc. [1882]. Waltz, Verfassungsgesch. ; Anfdnge d. Vassalit'dt ; 
do. d. Lehmvesens [in v. Sybel's Zeitschrift, XIII, 90 sqq.]. Braumann, 
de leudibus in regno Meroving. [Berol. 1865]. Guerard, Prolegomenes 
au Polyptique de Pabbe Irminoji [1845: the most renowned of the old 
M^orks, and without parallel for late Caroling, and early Capetian times]. 
Montesquieu, Sp. of the Laws. Naudet, Memoire sur Petal des per- 
sonnes sous les rois de la premiere race [Tome viii of Mem. de VAcad. 
des inscr. et belles-lettres. Comparable with Guerard]. Blanqui, FI. of 
Pol. Econ. Sohm, Altdeiitsche Reichs, u. Gerichtsvej'fassung.** Digby, 
H. of Real Property. Bastard d'Estang, Parlements de France, 2 v. 



CHAPTER VI 

FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 



§ I Feudalism defined 

Hallani, ch. ii. Gtiizot, Civ. in France, 2d course, ii. Roth, F. u. U., 27, 31. 

Turning from the mere external political frame of 
mediaeval society more to its inner nature, we encounter 
at the outset the ubiquitous fact of feudalism. Inextri- 
cably connected with this is the French monarchy, 
whereof it destroyed one dynasty and provided another. 
Unavoidable allusions to the institution have been made 
already : we must now subject it to study. The consti- 
tutive elements of feudalism were (i) the hierarchical 
gradation of social-political ranks, (2) bound together 
not by political loyalty but by the covenanted protec- 
tion of, and personal fealty ^ from, each lower by and to 
each higher, (3) based upon land.^ A secondary ele- 
ment of feudalism resulting from the above is that it 
forms the negation of the state in the proper political 
sense.^ This remarkable social formation, as different 
from earlier as from later, presents itself, from the tenth 
century, in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Eng- 
land : that is, wherever German life and institutions met 
Roman. The Normans developed it most perfectly at 
home, reformed and furthered it in England, trans- 



176 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

planted it to Lower Italy and Palestine. Even Hun- 
gary, Poland and Denmark were more or less affected 
by it. 

1 For convenience * fealty ' is here used as including * homage.' In full 
feudal times they were identical, though not at first. Originally fealty was 
mere recognition of superiority, not necessarily connected with land, while 
homage was subordination in respect to land. — Secretan, 120 sqq., 309; 
Hallam, ch. ii, pt. i. Simple homage could be offered to each of several 
superiors, liege homage to but one. — Secretan, 310. 

2 ' Profound materialism : man fixed to land, rooted to the rock where 
his tower rises. No land without lord, no lord without land. Man has 
become a thing of locality, rated as of high or low place, localized, immo- 
bile, weighted by the mass of his heavy chateau as of his heavy armor. 
The land is the man : to it pertains the veritable personality. In the 
phrase of the middle age, the man must serve his fiep — Michelet. 

3 This phase is well exhibited in both Roth's works. The tie holding 
vassal and suzerain together was in reality nothing but private contract. 
— Secretan, 195 sqq. 

§ 2 Its Modifications 

Hallatn, ch. ii, pt. ii. Secretan, preface. 

In point of historical evolution feudalism presents 
four periods : i Of formation, to the end of the ninth 
century, ii Of power, to the end of the thirteenth. 
We may take as the beginning of this epoch, as a quasi- 
legal establishment of feudalism, the capitulary ^ of 
Charles the Bald, ^'jjy placing their offices, as their 
benefices already were, entirely in the power of his 
great vassals, iii Of transformation, to the end of the 
sixteenth century, iv Of decay, to the present time.^ 
In respect to geographical distribution feudalism com- 
prises three types : i Normal feudalism or feudalism 
upon its native soil, that of the great Prankish monar- 
chy. Within this sphere too the system had various 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY IJJ 

phases, main and subordinate, French feudahsm differ- 
ing from German, Norman from South French, German 
proper from Lombard-ItaHan.^ 2 Transplanted, in 
Norman England, Norman Italy and Palestine. Jn 
each of these lands the historical type suffered impor- 
tant modifications, in England away from, in Palestine 
toward, abstract perfection of system. 3 Inchoate, as 
in Spain and in the Scandinavian North, where, in the 
one case Roman law and custom, in the other, Teutonic, 
shaped and hindered the development. 

1 * French royalty's act of abdication in favor of feudalism,' says Secre- 
tan, ' the heredity of functions is erected into law : the feudal era begins.' 
Charles the Bald had just bought peace from the Normans, unable to 
conquer them, and was intending [in vain : he died the same year] to 
make a campaign into Italy, summoned by the pope. The concession was 
given as the price of military aid. Guizot and most writers have mistaken 
this capitulary as relating to benefices. 

2 Cf. Maine's Essay, in Early Law and Custom, on the Decay of Feudal 
Property in Fr. and Eng. * That war [between rational and feudal law] 
will terminate for France only at the grand date of 1789 [the Revolution], 
by the triumph of equity over privilege. For the countries of Europe 
which have not gone in our path it is not at an end even now.' — Duruy. 
So late as 1536 Francis I w^ent through the vain form of summoning 
Emperor Charles V before the Parliament of Paris to answer for delin- 
quency as Francis's vassal for Artois and Flandre. 

3 For the weightiest of these differences, see §§ 13-15. 

§ 3 Its Causes 

Maine, Village Communities, i, iii-v. Blajiqici, Hist, of Pol. Economy, ch. x. Secre- 
tan, 8 sqq. Stubbs, ch. iii. 

The causes of feudalism may be classified as remote 
and direct. Chief among the remote should be men- 
tioned : I Incorrigible individualism on the part of the 
German race.^ 2 Ignorance and barbarism. The feu- 



178 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

dal ages were indeed not devoid of intelligence : the 
light of classical times had not gone out. But it had 
become entirely theological, non-political. The policy 
of the church was to discourage political study and 
thinking.2 The steadiness projected from the Roman 
state had been dissipated, while the thoughtfulness and 
self-restraint necessary to a reign of law were not yet 
born. 3 Poverty. The revenues requisite for a salaried 
public service not being obtainable, maintenance of 
order was forced to connect itself with ownership and 
use of land. Such necessity seems to have marked a 
phase in the early life of every people.^ The phenome- 
non which we here study, at any rate, simply marks a 
general process of land feudalization characterizing a 
certain grade in the political and economic growth of 
all the Aryan peoples. The universal primitive form of 
land ownership was the collective.* The invasions 
found the German village communities, where those of 
India are to-day, just emerging from this. Headmen of 
clans seized part of the land as their private possession,^ 
and asserted over the rest a guardianship which gradu- 
ally merged into a suzerainty.^ The primitive, demo- 
cratic community turned into a manor. We thus see 
that grants of land did not originate feudal practice but 
only aided ^ it, which explains the partial feudalization 
of non-Roman Germany and of Saxon England. 

1 Roth in the EinleiHmg of his F. u. U. protests against this estimate, 
and scolds Niebuhr for agreeing with F. Schlegel that ' the German's true 
constitution is anarchy.' 

2 Accordingly when, under Philip Augustus, Roman law came to be 
ardently studied in France, the pope solemnly forbade the monks to take 
it up. Cf. Martin, France, IV, 91, 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 1 79 

3 See Maine, V. C, v; Secretan, 8 sqq. 

* De Laveleye, Primitive Property. 

^ On the transition from Mark to manor, besides Maine, v, see Kemble, 
Saxons in England, I, 54 sqq. The Mark was a group of households 
democratically organized and governed, cultivating in common; the manor 
a group of tenants to a loj'd, aristocratically organized and governed. See 
Ch. IV, § 9, n. 2. 

6 Communities might likewise, by conquest or by colonization, win 
suzerainty over other communities. — Maine, 146. 

'^ Although feudalism could spring up without grants of land, such grants 
would powerfully further it, partly by increasing the number of the chief's 
tenants, partly by binding beneficiaries more closely to him. We can 
hence understand the rank growth of the system in France as well as the 
weak in Saxon England. 



§ 4 Common Theory of Origin 

Martin^ H. de Fr., vol. i. Giiizot, Lect., vol. iii, 339 sqq.; Essai's sur V hist.de 
France, iv, v. Secreta?i, ch. i. St7ibbs, ch. ix. Freeman, Norman Conquest, 
ch. iii. Roth, B\v., Vorwort, also 107, 108. 

As the direct roots of the system reference has usu- 
ally been had to four earlier institutions, three Roman, 
the fourth German, viz., those (i) of clients,^ (2) of the 
coloni,2 (3) of the laeti,^ (4) of the comitatus.* The 
great majority of qualified scholars have regarded the 
last of these as the specially active principle, operating 
from the moment of the invasion upon all the others, 
particularly upon that of the coloni, and have explained 
feudalism as the effect, gradual but speedy, of the thus 
blended forces. This theory regards Chlodovech a 
mere irresponsible chieftain with comitatus, rather than 
a proper king with subjects, a centre of strict public 
power. The men of his vast comitatus, swearing fidel- 
ity, not political but to him as a person, receive the 
crown lands, partly in an allodial,^ partly in a beneficiary 



l80 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

way, on condition of special service in the Heerbann, 
which they alone constitute. Then through the gen- 
eral transformation of allodial into beneficiary lands, 
and the analogy and cooperation of the coloni-arrange- 
ment already dominating the other extremity of society, 
a single, relatively homogeneous system is formed, which 
passes without essential jar, though of course not with- 
out some modification, from Merovingian to Carolingian 
times. 

^ Two of the regular feudal ' aids,' the ransom of a seignior from cap- 
tivity and gift of dowry-money on the marriage of his eldest daughter, were 
perfect analogues of obligations which Roman clients owed. — Ortolan, £jc- 
plication des Instituts de Justinien, I, 23. The third regular feudal aid 
was for knighting the lord's eldest son. Besides the aids were other ' feudal 
incidents ' : i) the relief, a payment by a deceased vassal's heir on his suc- 
cession, ii) ouster lemains or half-years' profits paid to lord when a male 
ward became 21 or a female 16, iii) escheats of lands to lords on failure of 
tenants' heirs, iv) forfeitures for crime involving corruption of blood, 
v) wardship or use by lord of the profits of land during minority of ward, 
and vi) marriage or the right of a lord, lest he should get an enemy for 
vassal, to dispose of his female ward in marriage on her attaining 14 years 
of age, to enjoy her revenues till 21 if she refused and of then at will with- 
holding consent to her marriage. Premier seizin was an extra relief paid 
by tenants in chief. 

2 Whatever else is uncertain, it can scarcely be doubted that this insti- 
tution survived till taken up into feudalism, for the entire system of which, 
so far as related to land, it furnished, as it were, the schema. Cf. Savigny, 
sur le colonat romain, in yournal pour la science historique du droit, 
vol. vi [1828], 273 sqq. 

^ Laeti held by the tenure called in Roman law emphyteusis. It in- 
volved usufruct and full right of disposition in every way, but not the 
actual fee simple or dominium. — Justinian's Institutes, bk. iii, 24, 3. It 
was nearer to freehold than is the English copyhold, which permits the 
landlord to work any mines discovered under the estate. Perreciot's theory 
derives the entire system of feudalism from the laeti. He cites many 
undoubted passages where, when feudalism was at its strongest, leudes or 
holders of fiefs are called * servi,^ as laeti were, and he thinks the difference 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 1 51 

between lords and servi [serfs] to have been at first slight, increasing little 
by little. Guerard, on the contrary, will not admit any analogy between 
Roman laeti and the Merovingian leudes. Secretan [204] holds that 
there is analogy, but not, as Perreciot contends, identity. He acutely 
observes that Perreciot's passages all relate to Alsace, Lorraine and the 
other border-lands between France and Germany, making it probable that 
'servi' is used in them simply for ' ministeriales'' [see § 13], and has no 
reference to the laeti-system. Merivale, Gen. H. of Rome, 581, calls 
emphyteusis ' a sort of feudal tenure.' 

^ See Ch. IV, §11 and n. Montesquieu was the first writer to empha- 
size the influence of the comitatus in originating or shaping feudalism. 
The habit had earUer been to refer it entirely to Roman sources : view of 
the Roman school, founded by Abbe Dubos \_H. critique d' etablissejtient 
de la nion. fran<;aise\ and best represented at present by Fustel de Cou- 
langes. The latter declares that there existed in Germany nothing resem- 
bling the feudal regime, but that this manifested all its germs in a very 
marked manner under the Roman empire. — Rev. d. d. Mondes, Mai, 1872. 
This is partly the same question canvassed at Ch. IV, § 10. 

^ * Allods ' [allodia] were estates in fee simple, thus differing from bene- 
fices. Cf. §7. 'Allod' perhaps =' C>^a/,' old-German for both land- 
ownership and nobility, related to * Adel.' See Stubbs, vol. i, 53; Secretan, 
96, n. The etymology, however, is doubtful. ' Alod ' may be connected 
with 'Loos,'' 'lot,' * allot,' etc., or from old-German ' Od,^ = property, which 
Guizot [Civ. in Fr., vol. iii, 343] makes the basis of 'feodum ' or 'feudum,' 
the Latin word for fief, 'y><?' [= money: cf. Ger. Vieh = czXtla; Sax. 
Ro77ifeoh = Peter's pence] being the other radical. 

§ 5 Roth's View 

Roth, as in the bibliog. Stubbs, vol. i, 251. Kanfntann, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. i, 

12 sq., 129 sqq. 

In recent years this more common theory of the rise 
of feudalism has been assailed with prodigious learning 
and energy by Professor Roth of Munich, who affirms 
the Merovingian to have been a genuine state, as free 
from feudal elements as the Roman or the choicest 
modern, whatever in it resembled the feudal system, 
except if one will the antrustionate or king's comitatus, 



1 82 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

being of a purely private nature. All crown lands were 
ceded, he believes, allodially, as veritable property, none 
of them in fief. Recipients of these estates did not 
alone form the Heerbann, took to the king no special 
oath, vassal or other, and were under no bond whatever 
to him save that of political loyalty, which rested upon 
all. Public law, not private contract, was the basis of 
social order. According to this adroit hypothesis, feu- 
dalism proper had origin only in the ninth century, 
under the sons of Karl Martell, the great innovation by 
these rulers being not a generalization of the Heer- 
bann ^ but their secularization of ecclesiastical lands in 
benefice to their supporters. Roth, Sohm, and even 
Waitz, seem to exaggerate the political character of in- 
stitutions under the first race. On students free from 
German prejudice the sources produce the impression 
that while Merovingian government was a state inform, 
and over the Roman population also in fact, the Franks 
themselves were for long held to their king by a tie 
conceived not as private in distinction from political, 
still not yet as exactly political, Chlodovech standing 
midway between comitatus-chief and king proper.^ 

1 Loebell has shown that the Merovingians required miUtary service 
from the whole population, Roman as well as Frankish. Roth admits that 
the kings of the first race had their antrustions. See next n. On these 
appropriations of church lands, Milman, vol. ii, 391. 

2 Naudet, 449, thus sums up : i Under the first race nobility was at- 
tached to the title of * leud^ ' antrusiio^ *fidelis,^ and was consequently 
personal, li Leudes did not necessarily have benefices, but every bene- 
ficed man was a leud. The benefice brought with it jurisdiction, hence 
increase of dignity, iii Heredity of benefices resulted from custom, not 
from law. Each fidelis at court would seek to secure for his son the suc- 
cession to his antrustionate, and to his benefice if possessing one. At last 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 1 83 

heredity became a right in both, iv Concessions of domains in full prop- 
erty began only under the successors of Dagobert [III, 7ii-'i6], at nearly 
the same time with the usurpation of the seigniories. A seigniory at first 
differed much from an hereditary benefice, as the latter d^d not then give 
its possessor the right to homage from residents under his jurisdiction. 
Roth derives feudalism from three relations, i the antrustionate, ii grants 
of benefices, iii the seigniorate or subjection of free men to other free 
men. Only the first, he alleges, existed under the first race. — F. u. U., 
31, 205 sqq. 

§ 6 Waitz's 

Waitz, as in the bibliog. Stubbs, vol. i, 251 sqq. 

Professor Waitz, perhaps the ablest authority living 
or dead upon the question, defends a view congruent 
partly with Roth's, partly with the old. He emphati- 
cally agrees with Roth in regarding the Merovingian a 
true political state, yet discovers in it already wide prev- 
alence of the comitatus. This institution, he says, no- 
wise forms the basis of the Merovingian government,^ 
at first has no proper political significance whatever, 
and is not closely related to grants of royal land. These 
grants themselves, however, this especially the case 
among the Franks, owing to the vastness of royal do- 
mains in Gaul, early acquire significance. Recipients 
do not, to be sure, become vassals in the crisp sense of 
later law, yet form somehow a special class, bound to 
unique fidelity toward the king.^ Churches and rich 
individuals also convey lands in similar fief-like fashion. 
Even in these cases, while, of course, totally irrelated to 
the comitatus,^ some promise of protection is generally 
understood to accompany the grant. Naturally there- 
fore, the vassal-benefice, including by and by the honor 
and the immunity,^ becomes by degrees connected in 



184 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

both thought and fact with the mere-benefice. More 
important, all these relations, at first purely private — 
here too Roth is right — press, in consequence of un- 
clearness in political conception, little by little, even 
under the first house, into the realm of public law, and 
at last, in late Carolingian time, wholly abolish the dis- 
tinct existence of this, merging it with private. 

1 Ct, Naudet's view, § 5, n. 2. 

2 This, it will be seen, is W.'s chief point of difference from Roth. He 
is also clearly correct as against Roth and Sohm in insisting upon the in- 
definiteness of Merovingian legal and political conceptions and the gradual 
character of the development of institutions under the first two dynasties. 
To apply the strict conceptions of modern law to Merovingian jurispru- 
dence implies great lack of the historical spirit. 

3 Perhaps even of Celtic origin, though by the time in question common 
among Germans. 

* An ' immunity ' was a relief from any public burden, as from a tax or 
a count's jurisdiction. The custom of granting such came from Roman 
times. * Honor ' meant the enjoyment of any positive public privilege or 
income, whether by a public officer, the usual case, or by another. Most 
honors involved immunity, but not vice versa. Naturally honors and im- 
munities were often confounded. 



§ 7 Tenures of Land 

Secretan, 375-424. 

Till Capet's time, tributary, allodial, and beneficiary 
lands have to be distinguished. In consequence of the 
conquest, lands remaining in possession of private own- 
ers, probably the larger part of all, freed now from 
Roman, came, in some irregular fashion, under Prankish 
tribute. They were mainly owned by wealthy Romans, 
tilled by coloni.^ Next most extensive then, were allo- 
dial lands, ' allotted ' in fee simple to antrustions and fol- 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 1 85 

lowers,^ by kings and chiefs. Nominally untaxed,^ they 
were really subject to slight charges, viz., certain gifts 
to the king and supplies to his agents and guests. 
These domains, enormous from the first, and for a long 
time continually enlarged in a great variety of ways, 
consisted of relatively few vast estates, daily made larger 
and fewer by encroachments of powerful possessors and 
by gifts to the church.* Still its theoretical superiority 
continued allodial tenure in favor,^ the number of these 
estates considerable. Such possessorship naturally be- 
came at length a mark of great, almost of royal, power. 
Lands of the third class, beneficiary, were originally the 
exception, Benefices varied in permanence, some revo- 
cable at pleasure, some for life, etc., but with a strong 
tendency, in the end victorious everywhere, to become 
hereditary. Of highest consequence is the transition, 
beginning early, of both tributary and allodial territory 
into beneficiary, due to : i Grants of fiefs, to swell reti- 
nues and reward services, made by powerful allodial pro- 
prietors from their own domains. 2 Like grants for 
like reasons made by lawless lords, of lands wrested 
forcibly from others : tributary or royal domains or the 
property of some neighbor. 3 Voluntary commendation, 
to escape such and other spoliation, an act by which a 
proprietor in fee simple transferred to a stronger his 
title, immediately receiving back his lands in fief, with 
guaranty of protection and usufruct. The practice of 
commendation, first touching personal relations alone, 
and applied to lands only gradually, at length became 
incredibly common. By the time of Charles the Bald, 
the first two species of tenure had well-nigh disap- 
peared. 



1 86 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

1 Tributary lands were held by three different forms of tenure : preca- 
riufH, common for church lands [n. 4], emphyteusis [§ 4, n. 3], and cen- 
sive. Tributary land under the last tenure differed little from a benefice, 
and * censives ' were often described and treated as benefices which paid 
rent, with or without service. 

2 'Antrustion' was only a special name for a member of the king's 
comitatus. Comites of the great nobles, each of whom, as well as the king, 
had his comitatus, were designated by some other title, as fideles or leudes. 
Allods were most common in the old Burgundian and Visigothic kingdoms, 
where the barbarians divided among themselves vast private lands. — Sec- 
retan, 398. 

3 This was the sole difference between these lands and the tributary. 
Louis le Debonaire made out a list of the monasteries which ' owed gifts^ 
showing that these were after all a virtual tax. But these, and the sup- 
plies, transportation, and even military service demanded of allodial holders, 
were remains of the regime of a public power and were not thought of as 
feudal in nature. Even ecclesiastical lands were not exempt from these 
burdens. Such allodial obligations were naturally little insisted on when 
royalty was at nadir. 

* The church at first held allodially, but might let lands by either of the 
tenures mentioned in n. I. 

^ So much so that in Charles the Bald's time the name * allod ' was 
given to fiefs or benefices. At a later date a precisely contrary diction 
comes to prevail, and the few remaining allods are called, in Germany, 
'fiefs of the sun' ^^Sonnenleheiil, in France, ^franc-fiefs.^ St. Louis's Es- 
tablishments conceive the king as God's fief-holder. Martin, IV, 307. 



§ 8 Society 

Blangui, ch. xiii. Hallam, ch. ii, pt. ii. Secretan, 185-276. 

Society fell into classes much, but not exactly, in 
agreement with varieties of relation to land. Next above 
slaves, pure serfs of the glebe, ^ belonging partly to the 
old population, partly to the new, stood a considerable 
class of freedmen, differing in degree of liberty accord- 
ing to mode of emancipation, royal, ecclesiastical or by 
charter,^ but never absolutely free. The old Roman 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 187 

order of curials or simple freemen, momentarily re- 
enforced at the invasion, by Franks not in the comitatus- 
relation, soon perished,^ its members driven by the stress 
of the times and also by law to the act of commenda- 
tion. Freeman like freedman must have patron. Con- 
sequently, as allodial holders grew few, the great bulk 
of society came to be composed of such as held in some 
of its manifold forms the relation of vassals. These 
were multiplied by the same influences as beneficiary 
lands. Many and most diverse social conditions were 
thus in one way and another under feudal contract : all 
ranks from serf to king, royal beneficiaries and ducal, 
beneficiaries of land, of office,* of service. Great office- 
fief-holders vied in power with the mightiest allodial 
lords. Vassals ^ had vassals. Mere personal vassalage 
even to the king was not hereditary, and involved no 
exceptional right save that of extra Wehrgeld. A new 
nobility indeed rose in this period, but it grew out of 
land. The clergy, feudal too, and the sole bond be- 
tween classes and nationalities, still formed an order by 
itself. All its members were revered, the higher power- 
ful almost beyond limit. The character of bishops and 
abbots as antrustions, if it dulled, did not kill, their 
popular sympathies, while it incalculably enhanced their 
ability to shield and help the weak. The church antago- 
nized the spirit of caste by both its preaching and its 
polity. A serf might become bishop or even pope. 

1 Servi terrae included coloni as well as slaves proper, diiTerence be- 
tween them being now very slight. Cf. Ch. IV, § 6, n. 2, also Guizot, Civ. 
in Fr., Lect. vii, and Leo, ATittelaltcr, vol. i, 22 sqq., for the manner in 
which peasants were reduced toward slaverv. The approach of coloni to 
veritable slavery after the invasions was due in part not to their degrada- 



1 88 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

tion but to the fact that German slavery was milder than Roman. See 
Duruy, 234; Thierry, Tiers Aiat, ch. i; Choiseul-Daillecourt, Inf. des 
Croisades, sec. i. 

2 Cf. the Roman modes of manmnission in Justinian's time : Institutes, 
bk. i, 5. Each freedman had to have his patron. If the solemnity of 
emancipation occurred before the king, he would be the patron; if before 
the church, the church; if by the master's written document, he. 

3 They were degraded or prevented from rising by the causes exhibited 
at Ch. IV, §§ 5, 6, and notes. Texts from the transition period still call ' free ' 
peasants who have commended themselves. In the 9th century a man with- 
out land could not testify against a free man, but could aid him as compurga- 
tor. The thought was that testifying was part of judging. Secretan, 193. 

* As, e.g., those about the palace and the king's person. The terms 
'fief and 'benefice' at first applied only to land, but gradually came to 
designate also all sorts of functions, immunities, and honors. The system 
was, as already said, based on land, but parts of it were at some remove 
from the basis. For the power of the constable of France, Guizot, Civ. in 
Fr., vol. iv, 13 sq. On bailiffs, seneschals, and prevots, § 16, n. 4, 

^ The word ' baron ' had several senses, the generic, of ' freeman,' the 
intermediate, in which it meant ' feudal seignior in general ' as in the 
phrase ' the barons of France,' and the specific, ' immediate seigniors,' 
barons par excelletice. Synonyme for the last sense was ' sire.^ The sires 
formed but a small class of all who could be called barons. ' Seignior ' 
and ' suzerain' bore a common meaning, being alike applicable to all who 
had vassals. Obviously the same man might be in different relations both 
vassal and suzerain or seignior. Rear vassals or ' va-vassals ' were vassals 
of vassals. Investiture was the formal act, usually with ceremony [§ 13, 
n. i], by which a suzerain conferred upon his vassal the possession of 
land. It was preceded by the act of homage, also, when they were sepa- 
rated, by that of fidelity. 

'° I.e., antrustions and other personal vassals did not, as such, form a 
nobility. 

§ 9 Feudalism Victorious 

Guizot, Civilization in France, xxiv and xxv. Dnruy, 172 sqq. Secretan, 82-110. 
Hallam, ch. ii. pt. i. Student's France, bk. iii. 

Free institutions, Frankish as well as Roman,^ per- 
ished in early Merovingian times, and in the contest 
now joined between royalty and aristocracy, everything 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 1 89 

conspired to aid the latter. Martell found royal offices 
already viewed not as mobile, hitherto the case, but as 
ranks and property, and in process of becoming heredi- 
tary. So soon as the marvellously centralized though 
merely personal government of Karl the Great was past, 
these tendencies swept all before them. It is noticea- 
ble that the chief agents of decentralization were pre- 
cisely the functionaries nominally representing the cen- 
tral government itself. To explain these results it is 
not sufficient, though necessary, to recall general causes. 
Also we must look beyond the weakness of later Caro- 
lingians and the size of their empire, i The practice 
of hereditary office, first obtaining the force of law, 
made itself law. 2 The very excellence of Karl's gov- 
ernment aided the disintegrating process by the respect 
it procured for the officers supposed to represent it.^ 
3 Their immense private ownership and numerous vas- 
sals in the districts they administered, inducing con- 
fusion between their two kinds of power, caused the 
separate legal characters of these to be ignored and 
forgotten. 4 Unprecedented attacks of Avars, Nor- 
mans and Saracens forced kings to appeal to their great 
feudatories for aid, to be had only by concessions. 
Castles now built against Normans enabled their insub- 
ordinate possessors to defy kings. A similar process 
affected subordinate principalities. Princes, pressed by 
private wars for greater aid from vassals, were com- 
pelled to yield them larger privileges. 5 Ecclesiastical 
assumption, asserting the pope's right to judge royal 
acts and even depose kings, while helpful to freedom in 
the first instance, wrought mightily to the pulling down 
of central power. 



igO FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

1 Cf. Ch, IV, §§ 5, 14, 15 [esp. n. 3]. From Roman institutions all 
but the form of freedom had departed before the 5th century, but the 
municipium may be said to have retained the form. 

2 ' It is found that when an official appointed by a powerful government 
acts upon the lower constitution of a primitive society, he crushes down 
all other classes and exalts that to which he himself belongs.' — Maine, 
V. C, 151. This the incipient feudal chiefs did when still in name agents 
of their government. The size of the empire augmented the evil, as was 
the case in the old- Roman. Karl Great even could not wholly overcome 
this. 

§ 10 Capetian Reaction 

Stubbs,, ch. i. Hallam, ch. i, pt. i. Duruy, 198-204, 469 sqq. Secreian, T15-140. 
Student's France, bk. iv. Kitchin, vol. i, bks. iii, iv. Ranke, Civil Wars and Mon- 
archy in Fr., bk. i. Guizot, 2d course, xii. 

After Karl the Great the old, half-national ducal sys- 
tem, never really dead, rose again to power. The prin- 
cipalities of France, Aquitaine, Bretagne, Bourgogne, 
Normandie, Flandre and Champagne became as good 
as separate states.^ Only the fear of German imperial 
designs, especially threatening under Otho I, kept the 
French kingship in being. When Hugh Capet, on the 
death of Louis V, elected by his chief peers, and favored 
by pope and clergy and by his own power and central 
position as Duke of France, proclaimed himself king, 
his de facto power increased but slightly and only in 
two ways. There were transferred to him (i) the ascrip- 
tion, not yet quite nominal, of public authority, and (2) 
the admitted if not efficient right of regulating the royal 
benefices. The theory that allowed fealty to a king, 
and looked to him for the maintenance of order and the 
protection of the weak, still lived. For all this Capet 
was only one, and not the strongest, among the dukes ^ 
who bore and were trying to realize the royal title. 
North, South and West ignored him. Two centuries 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY I9I 

failed to crown with success the struggle which he be- 
gun, and it must have been hopeless but for the fact 
that the dominions of his peers were as yet nowise fully 
organized feudally. Princes' pretensions were far in 
advance of their admitted rights. Hierarchy was imper- 
fect : seigniors who were not peers claimed and largely 
maintained independence, often fighting for the king 
against the peers demanding their allegiance. Yet the 
struggle could not but be long, since the rivals of the 
new king, hampered as they were, had immense power. 
In all but name they were sovereign, no authority above, 
no tax, no obligation to military service. Nothing but 
the inherent weakness of the feudal system, coupled 
with the persistence of the new dynasty in the at first 
dim, abstract, intangible idea of a general public power 
as necessary and right, could have restored to France a 
centralized government. 

1 Their princes, * peers of the king,' * peers of France,' called themselves 
dukes and counts ' by the grace of God,' At the beginning of the feudal 
epoch the princedom is no more than monarchy itself a feudal affair. It 
does not relate to land. Princes as such are not yet the feudal suzerains 
of the other land-holders in their borders, any more than the king is the 
feudal suzerain of either. I.e., each princedom contained many [feudally] 
independent barons. The evolution of these political overlordships into a 
proper feudal character was very slow. — Secretan, 116 sq. When in the 
nth and 12th centuries the peerage was brought under rule, there were 
six lay peers of France : the dukes of Bourgogne, Normandie and Aqui- 
taine, and the counts of Flandre, Champagne and Toulouse; and six eccle- 
siastical : the ducal archbishop of Rheims, the ducal bishops of Laon and 
Langres, and the count-bishops of Beauvais, Chalons and Noyon. These 
were the same lay princes as bore this relation at Capet's accession. The 
ecclesiastics were recognized as princes in the 12th century. 

2 At Capet's coup diktat, 987, 150 lords in France coined money. A 
smaller, J:)ut very large, number waged perpetual [private] wars, like sov- 
ereigns, refusing to take law from any superior. The capitularies of 



192 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

Charles the Simple, early in the loth century, were the last utterances of 
properly public legislation. 

§ II Feudalism How far a System 

Giierard, as in bibliog. Secretan, 195-230. Duriiy, 202 sqq. Guizot, 2d course, iv, v. 

Feudalism, to be studied at its most perfect stage, has 
to be seized while the Capetian family is in mid-struggle. 
Earlier the system is not developed, later when mon- 
archy has become an essential part of it it turns political, 
ceases to be feudal. So soon as military service to the 
state is established, and the rights of all, with the duties 
of all, even of the highest lords themselves, are pro- 
nounced upon and enforced by a central and supreme 
authority, essential feudalism is no longer present. At 
its apogee feudalism presents a confederation of petty 
sovereigns, despots, with arbitrary and absolute power 
over their subjects, very loosely united by a certain com- 
munity of interest and by at least theoretical allegiance 
to the same king. Each of these princes forms the apex 
to a hierarchy of ranks, two of them, under seigniors ^ 
and knights, free like himself, the third, or roticriei^Sy^ in 
actual serfdom though in part nominally free. Duties 
and rights subsisted only between proximate ranks, the 
theoretical freedom of a low vassal to appeal to his 
suzerain of the second degree being rarely used, more 
rarely of avail. All administrative and judicial offices, 
all public employments, privileges of every kind had 
assumed the character of fiefs. Yet the system of feu- 
dalism was even now by no means perfect. There were 
still allodial proprietors outside it, some cities especially 
in South France retained franchises,^ degrees of free- 
dom in the rotourier class were various. A prince might 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY I93 

infeud himself to his peer, or infeud that peer's vassal, 
or both. Cases occurred of princes that were vassals 
of their own vassals. Even the king of France was for 
certain lands a vassal to his own subjects. Fidelity, at 
first perfectly distinct from homage, had become insep- 
arably merged therewith.* Such confusion inevitably 
wrought extensive blending of ranks, and aided royalty 
by making evident and felt the need of a new govern- 
mental organization. 

1 Or rear vassals. A knight might or might not hold a land-fief. If he 
did, he was in the feudal hierarchy of course. But even if he did not pos- 
sess land, he was ' the man ' of him who had dubbed him knight. For the 
nature of this ceremony, so similar to the ancient Teutonic rite of receiving 
a new comes by a chief, see Secretan, 209; Guizot, Civ. in Fr,, vol. iv, 
20 sqq. Secretan, 210 sq., against Guizot, believes knighthood to be of 
Spanish- Arabian origin. He derives 'galant' from the Celtic 'galawji ' = 
brave. Vassals of one and the same degree of infeudation might of course 
differ much in the extent and character of their fiefs. There were among 
the rear vassals, counts and viscounts as well as mere seigniors. Bishops 
and abbots as temporal potentates also held this relation. Sub-infeudation 
did not require the suzei-ain's consent. Also, in spite of the salic law: de 
terra salica in mulierem nulla portio transit sed hoc virilis sexus acquirit, 
many females in France inherited fiefs, and in Germany female heirs always 
did so as against males more remote in blood. In Brittany this usage 
originated the term ' houiesse'' as title for a female vassal. The salic law 
referred in fact only to allodial estates, not to fiefs, least of all to the royal 
succession, as pleaded by Philip VI of Valois, in 1328, against Edward III 
of England [Hallam, ch, i, pt. i]. As to the word 'salic,' Guerard has as 
good as proved that it is from ' sala,^ the seignior's house, terra salica 
meaning the 'home estate.' So Grimm, Eichhorn and Mittermeyer, but 
not Guizot, who holds to the old view connecting 'salic' with ' saP = the 
sea, and the ' Salian ' Franks. But salic land is much oftener mentioned 
in connection with other peoples than with the Salian Franks. It may 
have meant the entire estate or merely so much as had not been let out to 
coloni. Secretan, 405, takes it to include the whole, like the haercditas 
aviaticd of the Ripuarian Franks. Cf. Hallam, note iii to ch. ii; Martin, 
vol. iv, bk. xxviii [a very full and able discussion]. 



194 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

2 Immediately after the invasion there was a class of Teutonic poor, 
the litiy parallel and similar to the coloni, both these being superior to 
slaves. By the nth century liti and coloni are no longer distinguished, 
and the difference between them and slaves has become slight. This 
partly by elevation of the slaves. They are now serfs, bound to the soil, 
rather than mere personal chattels as once. This betterment came mostly 
through the influence of the church [ch. iii, § i6, n. 3], partly by the opera- 
tion of the Roman law rule pai'tus seqtiitur ventrem in determining per- 
sons' status as bond or free. Women oftener than men married beneath 
them. ' Villains ' were in regular feudal times on nearly the same level 
with serfs, but the name usually denotes non-agricultural roturiers, as the 
people about the castle, villa or village. Villains are thus more closely 
related than serfs to the bourgeois, town-folk, or third estate. Cf. Guizot, 
Lect. vii, viii, 2d course. * Roturier ' is, according to Du Cange, from rup- 
tuariiis = a peasant, and this from agrum rumpere, to break the soil. 

^ Were not, that is, subject to any neighboring feudal lord but to the 
king alone; i.e., in effect independent. Notice how Roman law influences 
there kept feudalism from attaining the power in South France which it 
had in North. Not only allods still remained, but there were waste lands, 
theoretically the king's, practically res milliiis. 

* For the relation of fealty, or fidelity, to homage, § i, n. i; also § II. 
For the kindred distinction between a 'justice '-fief and a fief proper or 
land-fief, Secretan, 437 sqq. 

§ 12 Defects and Merits 

Guizot, 2d course, iv. Durity, 237 sqq. Hallam, ch. ii, pt. ii. 

As a form of government, feudalism was about the 
worst possible. Its principle of subordination could not 
be enforced : disquiet, wars, insecurity were terrible and 
continual. What order the system did succeed in evok- 
ing was more dearly bought than under other types of 
despotism. The little but officious sovereign, so near, 
perpetually reminded his subjects of their condition, 
while their paucity delivered him from the necessity of 
governing by general rules. Personal government here 
developed its least worthy species, the prince depending 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY I95 

on force instead of law, ignorant, wilful and cut off by 
the system from all natural or competent advisers. Nor 
were these evils, as in many historical despotisms, as- 
suaged by a stately mechanism or an evident high mis- 
sion of the government, suggesting divine ordination. 
It cannot be said that feudalism inherited all these ills : 
it aggravated most that it received, engendered new 
from its own bosom. But we may admit that it : i In 
efforts toward public order had society and the times 
against it.^ 2 Somewhat ameliorated the condition of 
mere serfs. ^ 3 Through its aristocratic form of tenure, 
favored the subjugation of lands and the introduction of 
improved agricultural methods more than a freer system 
could then have done.^ 4 Greatly furthered sentiments 
of chivalry, such as honor, fealty to superiors and the 
exaltation of woman.* 5 Was a main source of the 
ideas of self-dependence, personal dignity and regard for 
personal liberty,^ as these appear in modern govern- 
ments and life. 6 Greatly aided through its cultivation, 
direct and indirect, of these ideas, to effect first the 
birth then the enfranchisement of that third estate^ 
which the Roman empire had annihilated and by the 
aid of which alone the Capetian kings were enabled to 
recreate government in the proper political sense, public 
and centralized. 

2 Feudalism herein merely concurred with other causes, religion and 
the growth of men's knowledge of men. It acted partly by the promi- 
nence it gave to the principle of land, making the slave an adscriptus 
glehae [§ 8, n. i] instead of a personal chattel, and partly by its continual 
exhibition of free men contending for their freedom as a precious thing. 

3 So Inama-Sternegg, also Maine, V. C, 162. Possessors of land en- 
forced drainage, clearing and the like. ■• 



196 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

* Weber, Weltgesch , I, 757; Symonds, Age of the Despots, vii; Hallam, 
ch. iij Duruy, 239 sqq.; Secretan, 210 sqq. Feudal law, herein according 
with both Roman law and Teutonic custom, kept woman under tutelage, 
yet treating her less and less as a chattel. The establishments of Nor- 
mandy alone among feudal codes declare that ' no woman has response in 
a laic court/ The nobles, forced to be much at home, cultivated and 
came to enjoy the society of their wives and children. In turn this devel- 
oped female character. But much was now doing aside from feudalism or 
chivalry to ennoble the individual and to heighten esteem for woman. In 
the latter regard, worship of the Virgin had great effect. Throughout 
these rude centuries the church stood nobly, on the whole, for freedom. 
Serfs became priests, might mount the papal throne itself. 

° All feudal life displayed these. Even feudalism's worst evils, its 
anarchy and private wars, had thus their saving aspect. See Kitchin, 
vol. I, bk. iii, ch. iv, also Mills and Clark, as in bibliog. 

6 See § 16. 

§ 13 German Feudalism 

Secretan, 142-170. Schulte, Reichs- u. Rechtsgesch., 144-287. 

This differed considerably from French. It was far 
less homogeneous, embracing three forms of subordina- 
tion which remained to the last legally distinct, here 
mentioned in an order exactly the reverse of that of 
their origination : i Lehnrecht, public feudalism or feu- 
dalism proper.^ Strictly the terms feiidum, vassal and 
LeJinsinann relate to this alone. Here we have a con- 
tract truly feudal, and a system somewhat like the 
French. 2 Schutzrecht, quasi-feudalism, the relation be- 
tween the freeman too poor to equip a horse for war, 
and the duke or count whom he paid to represent 
him. This sort of arrangement began under Henry the 
Fowler 2 during the Avar wars, and made itself perma- 
nent. 3 Hofrecht, or private feudalism, the continuation 
of the old comitatus-relation. Vassals of this species, 
called ministerials, were of very various conditions, form- 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY I97 

ing two great classes, the non-military, who fell to the 
rank of serfs or half-serfs, and the military, who were 
free, and many of whom became knights, superior in 
rank to men under Schutzrecht. Indeed the distinction 
between military ministerials and vassals proper grew 
to be in time mostly nominal. But even the public 
feudalism of Germany had features of strong contrast 
with the French. The great immediate fief-holders here 
never bore to the king, which was finally the case in 
France, the same relation as vassals upon the royal 
domains. Other peculiarities of the institution in Ger- 
many were the legal and regular manner of its introduc- 
tion and its connection with royalty. Here royalty in- 
troduced feudalism, and was, as to its power, annihilated 
by the same, while in France feudalism introduced a 
royal line at whose hands itself perished. Note too the 
late origin of German feudalism proper, at the close of 
the Carolingian period. 

1 German feudal law allowed various forms of investiture, correspond- 
ing to the various symbols which stood for the different classes of fiefs. 
Lay fiefs of the first class [immediate] were symbolized by the flag 
\_Fah7ie'] and hence called Fahnlchen, ecclesiastical fiefs of this class by 
the sceptre, lay rear-fiefs by the gauntlet, ecclesiastical by the key. — Secre- 
tan, 311. 

2 See Ch. V, § 7. 

3 A fief under Hofrecht was called a ' Dienstlehen* one under Lehn- 
recht a ^ Re-chtslehen^ a rear-fief an ' After leken^ [Latin, ^ subfeudum^\ 

§ 14 Italian 

Secretan, 171-185. Hallam, ch. i, pt. i, ch. iii. Duruy, ch. xxix. Weber, Welt- 
gesch., I, 699 sqq. Symonds, Age of the Despots. BzirckJiardt, Renaissance in 
Italy, pt. I. 

In Italy 1 feudalism had no special internal peculiarity 
but suffered decided modifications from other institu- 



IQO FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

tions, viz. the church and the communes. The con- 
quest by Karl the Great changed Italian feudalism in 
no essential, except to give extraordinary place in it to 
immunities and honors, which the Franks introduced 
here just as they were turning hereditary. By eccle- 
siastical immunities especially, Otho I sought to coun- 
tervail and humble the Italian counts in their struggle 
for independence. The power thus obtained by bishops 
in and about their towns, while it was the germ of 
municipal liberties, soon raised up a new class of tyrants 
and rebels, more dangerous to imperial pretensions than 
the first. Hence we see in Italy the rare spectacle of 
emperors earnestly strengthening their lay vassals ^ as a 
check to the capitani or heads of the great episcopal 
families. Conrad the Salian and his son, Henry HI, 
went farthest in this policy. Cities too were now 
favored as against the bishops, both by the emperor 
and by feudal nobles. The might of the communes, 
thus fostered first under episcopal preeminence then 
by imperial and feudal patronage, became at the open- 
ing of the Hohenstaufen period invincible. They quite 
eclipse in splendor and power all but a few of the feu- 
dal aristocrats, many of whom seek alliances with them. 
Numerous cities of the twelfth century, having acquired 
the corpoi'a sancta of their bishops, swayed territories 
larger than counties. Several made other cities tribu- 
tary. Many on the other hand accepted the protection 
and the rule of neighboring barons. The communes 
were hence as impotent as feudalism to give Italy a 
governmental system. Destitute of union except so 
long as forced to this by imperial persecution, those 
which secured their liberties were not able to guard 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 199 

them, and fell prey to tyrants, who, however, were not 
feudal.^ No other land in feudal times promised free- 
dom as did Italy, none has enjoyed it so little. 

1 By Italy here North Italy is of course meant : in the South feudalism 
had much more of its Norman completeness. Cf. §§ I, 2. 

2 Making them hereditary, e.g. 

3 Bat pure upstarts, like those of ancient Greece. See Burckhardt, 
Renaissance, and Symonds, Age of the Despots, esp. ch. ii. A few, how- 
ever, rose in part by the aid of real or alleged feudal right, or of imperial 
ofhce, and were hence somewhat more tolerable than the lawless condot- 
tieri like Guarnieri, whose corslet bore the legend : * Enemy of God, 
of Pity and of Mercy '; or Doge Agnello of Pisa, whose servants waited on 
him on their knees; or Giangaleazzo of Milan, who quartered 5000 boar- 
hounds on his peasants; or his son, Giovan Maria, who used hounds for 
his bodyguard, feeding them no flesh but human, which he enjoyed seeing 
them tear from living subjects. 

§ 15 English 

Stuhbs, chaps, i-vil; cf. his Select Charters, pt. i. Hallam, ch. viii. Gneist, Eng. 
Constitution, ch. i. Freeman, Growth of do., 740 sqq. ; Norman Conquest, ch. iii. 
Greefi, H. of Eng. People, bk. ii. 

The Normans found England already in process of 
becoming feudal. The old system ^ of holding lands 
community-wise had been introduced by the Saxons into 
England only in part. The folclands^ and the common 
holdings of Saxon townships were traces of it, but the 
rule was individual possession. This gravitated toward 
feudalism through the influence of the comitatus. As 
in early France, victorious leaders parcelled out con- 
quered districts among their followers, to which addi- 
tions from the folclands were made from time to time 
to reward old retainers or win new. Only, in Saxon 
England, the tie between landholders and their supe- 
riors was to the very Conquest at bottom personal in- 
stead of properly feudal. The landholder owned his 



200 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

land in fee simple, his debt of military service being re- 
sult of ownership, not condition of usufruct. The land- 
less were obliged to have patrons but might elect and 
change these. Of course the distinction between this 
and a feudal system was not obvious, and several things 
increased, the resemblance : i Unity of the kingdom in- 
stituted at once a perfect hierarchy of relations, from 
the king downward to all recipients of folcland and their 
dependents. 2 Every possessor of folcland had juris- 
diction throughout his territory. 3 Commendation by 
allodial holders was frequent, especially during the 
Danish wars. 4 ' Heriots ' resembled reliefs.^ Yet in 
spite of these feudal features the essence gf feudalism, 
at least as to central tenure of land, was not yet present. 
It came only with the Conquest. Vast numbers of 
Norman landholders were then substituted for Saxon, 
and in all other cases the above relations speedily came 
to be construed silently according to Norman feudal law, 
England being saved from the thorough-going feudal 
system of Normandy only by the sturdy and enlightened 
royal ambition of the Conqueror and his successors, 
which preserved the Norman-English kingship as an 
efficient central power, public, not feudal, in character.* 

1 See Ch. IV, § 9, n. 2. 

'^ I.e., public lands, the very name indicating that commons and waste 
patches belonged to the folk, not to the king. 

3 For the nature of the 'relief,' § 4, n. i. The heriot, like the relief, 
was some piece of property or symbol thereof sent from among the effects 
of a deceased vassal to that vassal's lord, but with the difference that the 
heriot looked to the past, as a restoration of loaned property, while the 
relief regarded the future, being a sort of fee in a suit for re-grant of land. 
Heriots purported to proceed from dead vassals, reliefs from the heirs of 
such. 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 201 

* The Norman-English feudal constitution proceeded, like the German, 
from the king, instead of being prepared /tpr him as in France. William 
and his successors continued to govern by sheriffs and militia, as the Saxon 
kings had. All landholders of consequence were made their immediate 
vassals. The fiefs of all the great vassals were assigned in numerous 
widely separated pieces and localities. Rear vassals, like their suzerains 
had to swear allegiance to king directly. The new line became kings 
theoretically not by conquest but as heirs of Edward, hence as kings of 
Saxons, of the whole people, not merely of their Norman fief-holders. 
Under this plea they were able to conserve whatever of Saxon things favored 
royal power as against the barons. In the sequel, this adroit fiction told 
powerfully for English liberty. See the author's Inst, of Constitutional 
Hist., I, §§ 9 sqq. 

§ 1 6 Communes and the Third Estate 

Rev. historique , xxi, 91 sqq. Guizot, Civilization in Europe, vii [2d course, xvi-xix]. 
May, Democracy in Europe, chaps, vii, xii-xviii. Blatic, Revolution Franqaise, 
Liv. II, i. 

During the long wrestle of the French king with his 
barons rose a third power, the people, destined to final 
victory over both. It began and for six hundred years 
served as an ally of monarchy. By the twelfth century 
numerous French communes, having from their oppres- 
sion learned to love and defend liberty, were after strug- 
gles long and brave, at last free, with elective officers, 
high justice^ and their own legislation. To insure them- 
selves against their old feudal masters they sought rec- 
ognition and charters from the king on condition of 
assisting him in war. It was by their contingents that 
Philip Augustus conquered at Bouvines.^ Their aid 
was at length so decisive that the lords too were glad to 
purchase it by larger grants of liberty and immunity.^ 
But the communes, which soon sank in significance, 
opposed feudalism less in this direct manner than as 
cradles of a new and incalculable social force, the third 



202 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

estate. The cities that had aided the king to his inde- 
pendence ^ he might rob wholly or partly of theirs, still 
the burgher spirit remained and increased. Most royal 
officers, as bailiffs, seneschals and prevots, were burghers, 
whose numbers and power as well as many of their spe- 
cific acts wrought to exalt their class and depress aris- 
tocracy. All secular, especially all legal,^ learning, all 
technical skill, business enterprise and administrative 
talent, all great wealth that was /nobile, and in particu- 
lar all earnest national feeling^ belonged to the third 
estate. It thus became the leading force in France's 
political progress, aiding monarchy to first place as 
against feudaHsm, then turning against the two, now 
united to fight it, and thenceforth never lowering its 
hand till constitutional government was attained.''' 

1 The communes, more strictly so-called, were the towns Mans [the 
first] Cambrai, Beauvais, Laon, Amiens, Rheims, Etampes, Vezelay, and 
a few others, which forcibly wrested their liberty from lords' grasp, high 
justice and all, while boroughs or villes de bourgeoisie were towns which 
obtained in a pacific way concessions mostly short of high justice. For- 
mally less free than communes, they succeeded better in retaining what 
freedom they had. Most boroughs were of mediteval origin, but the 
borough franchise is found to have belonged to many cities, like Paris 
and Orleans, which, though ancient, seem not to have kept up, as did 
Marseilles, Aries, Nismes, Narbonne and Toulouse, the Roman municipal 
regime [Ch. Ill, § 13, n. 4]. Every commune had what was called high 
justice, i.e., could inflict the severest fines and penalties. Some of the 
boroughs had this haute justice, others only the moyenne or the basse, ac- 
cording to the terms of their charters. Feudal lords likewise had the 
haute, moyenne or basse, according to their rank. 

2 In 1 214, over the formidable allied armies of King John of England 
and the Emperor Otho IV. Contingents from 16 French towns fought 
under Philip's banners. His opponents also had burgher forces from most 
of the Flemish cities. To this battle, which humbled John, England is in- 
debted for the Great Charter. 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 203 

8 It became the policy of many great feudatories to attract peasants to 
their lands by forming villages with special privileges. See Duruy, 340, 
the charter given by Count Henii of Troves to his Villeneuve. Tlie 
charter was commonly accompanied by a code of laws, ' customs,' for the 
inhabitants. Giraud, appendix to vol. i, has an interesting collection of 
these charters and codes: for Stiassburg, Bigorre, Sindelsberg, Soest, 
Nieuport, Medebach, Montpellier, Carcasonne, Martel, Albi, Furnes, Tou- 
louse and Freiburg in Breisgau. 

* There were of course many ancillary causes of this Capetian triumph 
over feudal aristocracy. The foremost were (i) the intrinsic weakness of 
feudalism itself, (2) the length of the reigns of most Capetian kings, 
(3) the study of Roman law, (4) frequent choice by vassals of the king 
as arbiter in their quarrels, (5) the favor of the Galilean clergy, partly 
out of fear of the king, partly out of love and loyalty, (6) the crusades, 
impoverishing aristocracy, deranging its constitution and disseminating new 
ideas, and (7) the creation of an order of royal officers in the proper, 
non-feudal sense, thoroughly in the interests of the crown : those bailifis, 
seneschals and prevots mentioned in the text. * Bailiffs ' was the name of 
these missi dominici [for such they essentially were] in North France, 
' seneschals ' in the South. Prevots were officers of a lower grade, admin- 
istrative and judicial in function, confined to the provinces directly pos- 
sessed by the descendants of Hugh Capet. Most of the king's immediate 
feudatories, following his example, created bailiffs, or seneschals, and pre- 
vots each for his own territory. As one great fief after another became 
incorporated in the royal domain the local legal and administrative ma- 
chinery hence adjusted itself easily to the general. Bastard d'Estang, 
ch. iii. 

^ Jurists especially were third estate men. They carried over to the 
king of France the ascriptions of authority which the Roman law couples 
with the emperor. St. Louis permitted cities of South France to use 
Roman law as their municipal law. 

^ From about 1214, date of the battle of Bouvines, not before, we may 
speak of * France ' as a political unity, and can detect an incipient enthu- 
siasm for France as a nation [see next §]. Aristocrats have often had 
loyalty, rarely s\.vor\g patriotism. This is emphatically a popular virtue. 

^ Cf. Ch. X, passim, esp. § 6. 



204 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

§ 17 SuGER AND Philip Augustus 

Hallam, ch. i, pt. i. Guizot, 2d course, xiii. Kitchin, vol. i, bk. iii, chaps, v, vi, 
vii. Milman, IX, iv. Martin, vols, iii, iv. 

While the Capetians pursued from an early period a 
political policy, their progress consisted for long mainly 
in the increase of their feudal power and territory. It 
was slight at best. In spite of the acquisition of Bur- 
gundy by Robert, Philip I, 1 060-1108, excommunicated 
by the pope ^ and at war with William the Conqueror, 
saw the new royalty at its nadir, the duchy of France, 
which was the substance and almost the whole of his 
kingdom, reduced to five counties, between which inso- 
lent lords disputed his passage. From this time the 
course is upward.^ That march of political monarchy 
in France, ending in the absolutism of Louis XIV, 
which made the king the sole judge, administrator and 
legislator in the land, began with Louis the Fat, 1108- 
'37. This able monarch attacked insubordinate nobles 
with energy and success, introducing the principle of 
his statesmanlike minister Suger,^ that the royal power 
was to be viewed and used as an organ of public order 
and justice. This was henceforth a settled doctrine of 
the house. Philip Augustus acted upon it in a far 
larger and bolder way still. He refused to do homage 
for any of his fiefs whatever,* attacked by the qtiaran- 
taine-le-7vy^ the right of private war, and roused the 
spirit and pride of nationality by successful opposition 
to the nation's foes in the great victory of Bouvines, 
where French patriotism figured for the first time in 
history.^ Further, by combined fortune, fraud, force 
and diplomacy, Philip wrested from John the possession 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 205 

of Normandy and the suzerainty of Bretagne, Poitou, 
Maine, Touraine and Anjou/ results the more remark- 
able as, shortly before, English power in France, so 
predominant, seemed on the point of absorbing the 
French kingdom entire. Lastly, without taking part 
in the crusade against the Albigenses, he inaugurated 
the movement whereby that crusade was to result ^ 
under Saint Louis, in the addition to the royal domains, 
which apart from this Philip had doubled, of the whole 
vast territories of the Counts of Toulouse. 

1 See Ch. V, § 16, n. 3. Philip was ten years under the ban and then 
submitted. Papal intervention in this case was honorable and its effect 
beneficial. "William the Conqueror corrupted Philip's feudatories by offer- 
ing them lands across channel, and Philip revenged himself by stirring 
Robert, William's son, to revolt. 

2 Interesting to notice how in the succession of Capetians able kings 
alternated with faineants. To Philip I succeeds Charles the Fat, one of 
whose best-deserved titles was * the wide-awake.' Louis VII came next 
[ii37-'8o], with equal propriety dubbed 'the foolish.' It was he who 
lost above 50,000 men for naught in the second crusade, and who, by the 
divorce of his first queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, alienated that province 
with Poitou to England, whose soon-to-be King Henry II married Eleanor 
in six weeks from her divorce. Suger opposed this divorce in vain. 
Philip Augustus, France's next monarch [1180-1223J, was one of her very 
greatest, a worthy successor of Charlemagne, but Louis VIII [1223-26] 
was wholly insignificant, leaving * no glory save that of having been the 
son of Philip Augustus, the husband of Blanche of Castile, and the father 
of St. Louis.' Philip the Bold [i270-'85] and Philip the Fair [1285- 
13 14] show the same alternation, and so in some degree do the next pair, 
Louis X [1314-'! 6] and Philip V [1316-22]. The line ends with 
Charles IV [i322-'28]. At his death rose the great question whether or 
not the succession should be governed by the Salic law [§ ii, n. i], 
Edward III of England, Philip Fair's grandson, claiming as next of kin, 
though in female line, against Philip of Valois, who succeeded as Philip VI, 
being nearest in the male line. 

^ Suger's was an interesting life. He and Louis [the Fat] were brought 



206 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

up together, the prince with the charity boy, in the monastery of St. Denis, 
where they grew to be warm friends. When Louis in 1108 became king, 
he took his old intimate for his minister. 

* As all his Capetian predecessors had had to do for some fiefs. Philip's 
refusal was an assumption of a pronounced superiority in kind, of the king 
over all, even the greatest, of those landholders hitherto esteemed his peers. 

s *The king's forty days,' an enforced truce for that length of time 
between a murder, e.g., and the taking of private vengeance, which the 
times were as yet too rude to forbid entirely. Yet the interval often led 
to adjudication by regular legal methods. Choiseul-Daillecourt, Inf. des 
CroisadeSy n. 99. 

^ See § 16, n. 2. 

■^ Arthur Plantagenet [duke of Brittany, and so Philip's vassal], son of 
Geoffrey, John's elder brother, wished to wrest England from John. Philip 
permitted French knights to join the expedition. But on April 3, 1203, 
Arthur was assassinated, by John's own hand according to Guizot, at any 
rate through his agency. See Freeman, Norm. Conq., ch. xxvii. Philip 
summons John as his vassal for Normandy to answer for this felony, and 
on his non-appearance declares that immense fief forfeited to the crown of 
France. Bretagne, which had been a sub-fief to Normandy, becomes an 
immediate fief of France, carrying with it Poitou, Maine, Touraine and 
Anjou, which had subjected themselves to Arthur on Richard's death. On 
the rise of the French power of the English kings, Duruy, 376. Cf. 
Green's map, H. of Eng. People, vol. i, p. 160 [Shorter H., p. 100]. 

^ Martin, vol. iv, 348. The settlement of 1229, at the close of the ter- 
rible Albigensian Crusade [Ch. VII, § 16], was to the effect that Ray- 
mond VII, the new Count of Toulouse, should give up all lower Languedoc 
to France at once, hold the remainder of the Toulouse possessions during 
his life, and make them at death the dowry of his only daughter, \\\q fiancee 
of Alphonso, Philip's third son. The Capetian house thus became for the 
first time dominant in the South. Philip Augustus did not live to see the 
arrangement of 1 229, yet it resulted from his astute planning. Observe 
that the Capetian power marched forward by i) increasing the lands im- 
mediately belonging to the duchy of France, and ii) reducing the peers of 
France, or crozvn vassals, to a subjection practically as complete as that of 
the vassals of France, the legal difference of these two species of subjection 
being at length lost from view. The evolution had gone far even under 
Philip Augustus, whom we find treating crown vassals as if they had be- 
longed to his French duchy, forcing them lo defer to him, hitherto regarded 
their peer, as their liege suzerain. Heeren, Pol. IVerke, II, 166 sq. 



feudalism and the french monarchy 20/ 
§ 1 8 Saint Louis 

Masson, St. Louis and the 13th century. Martin, vol. v. Milman, XI, i. Kitchin, 
vol. i, bk. iii, ch. viii. Guizot, 2d course, xiv. 

Saint Louis, 1 226-' 70, was a brave, a sagacious and, 
at home, a successful captain,^ yet of his vast territorial 
acquisitions the sword was much less the instrument 
than happy negotiations and alliances. His mightiest 
engine in uplifting his kingdom was after all the tran- 
scendent excellence of his character. With little of the 
folly then so commonly attaching to preeminent devo- 
tion, he was a man of the most pronounced religious 
conviction and life, in righteousness the light of his 
time, another Aurelius, a better Charlemagne, richly 
meriting his title of ' Saint.' Abroad he exalted France, 
being repeatedly chosen arbiter of disputes concerning 
other rulers,^ at home he sanctified royalty, the tendency 
ever after him being to view the king as of necessity 
the embodiment and source of justice. Thus the royal 
jurisdiction acquired a prestige and steadiness hitherto 
unknown. Louis was politic as well as good and brave. 
More feudal in spirit than his grandfather, less inclined 
to open breach with the old system, he used meas- 
ures far more fatal to it than any of those of Philip 
Augustus. His abolition throughout the royal domains 
proper, of judicial combats,^ was an innovation veritably 
revolutionary. He also dared to legislate for the do- 
mains of his vassals, to call burghers into his council 
and to broaden the right of appeal from feudal to royal 
courts as well as the class of causes which these alone 
could try. Every freeman might now if he would, be 
tried before the king's bailiff if not before the king him- 



208 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

self. The new rigor and frequency of royal assizes in- 
sisted upon by this just ruler brought about the momen- 
tous change of the king's court and the court of peers 
into the Parliament of Paris.^ In this, the ignorance 
of the feudal judges unfitting them to handle the now- 
necessary evidence and laws, especially the Roman, more 
and more pressing into use, plebeian jurisconsults were 
introduced to aid them. The judiciary became affair of 
the third estate. Thus, the lawyers as well as the law 
which they mainly administered being favorable to the 
king, the entire course of feudal as of royal justice was 
under his influence and made to minister to his ends.^ 

1 For his ill success as a crusader, see Ch. VII, § 15. St. Louis pushed 
conquests at home by no means as far as he might easily have done but 
for his conscientious and pacific temper. He labored less to extend than 
to unify and consolidate his realm, to establish order and diffuse and 
deepen the national spirit. Under him monarchy has become essential to 
the feudal system, it being now a maxim that the whole lay jurisdiction ema- 
nates from the king. Hence feudalism from this time rapidly declines [§ 1 1 ] • 

2 Most memorable was his intervention between Henry III of England, 
and his barons. He decided favorably to the English monarchy, yet ex- 
pressly saving the Great Charter and England's traditional liberties, beau- 
tifully exhorting withal, ' that the king of England and his barons do 
mutually forgive each other, that they do forget all the resentments that 
may exist between them in consequence of the matters submitted to our 
arbitration, and that henceforth they do refrain reciprocally from any of- 
fence and injury on account of the same.' The appeals of Henry and 
of the barons and Louis's response are all given in full in Stubbs, Select 
Charters, 406 sqq. Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. i. 52, makes Alfred 
the greatest of all human rulers and St. Louis next. But Louis could not 
wholly transcend his age. His ' establishments ' condemn heretics to death. 
He sanctioned the Inquisition, and his confidence in the miraculous power 
of saints' relics was unbounded, causing him often to be imposed upon by 
vendors. 

3 By feudal law doubtful cases were often decided by various sorts of 
ordeals. The defendant must plunge his arm in boiling water and with- 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 209 

draw it unharmed, walk upon burning coals receiving no injury, or float in 
the water with his arms tied. Plaintifl" and defendant often fought to 
decide guilt, or a suitor regularly condemned might quash his sentence by 
a successful duel — judicial combat — with each judge who had declared 
against him, a custom which made might sole determinant of right. Louis's 
law abrogating this barbarous practice, though meant at first only for his 
own domain, Philip Fair applied Httle by little in the remotest districts of 
France. See Martin, vol. iv, 290 sqq., 303, 311 sqq. Martin, from the 
origin of the word ' gage ' in the phrase * gage of battle ' [gage — pledge : 
the challenger leaving a pledge with the judges] considers the custom as of 
Celtic not less than of German origin. 

* Martin, vol. iv. 294; Thierry, Tiers Etat, I, ii; Bancroft and Des- 
maze, as in bibliog. ; Secretan, 500 sqq. The origin of the Parliament of 
Paris is uncertain and has occasioned much controversy. The most recent 
investigations derive it not from the ancient national assemblies [Ch. IV, 
§ 15, n. 3] but from the king's council, i.e., his feudal court. This in turn 
had grown up from a blending of i) the old feudal court of the duchy of 
France, such as all the great vassals had, with ii) the court of peers, which 
Philip Augustus assembled in 1203 for the condemnation of John. We read 
little of the latter court save on this memorable occasion, for the reason that 
it pertained to royalty, which till now had for centuries been in abeyance; 
but the court cannot have been created now. We regard it as in some 
sort related to the ancient national assemblies. The king's council grew 
into the Parliament of Paris by assuming certain attributions, anti-feudal in 
nature, from the royal chamber, to which the king's bailiffs and seneschals 
rendered their accounts. This famous Parliament [several similar ones 
subsequently existed in various parts of France], whose history is traceable 
from this time to the Revolution, was mainly not a legislature but a court, 
yet with administrative and even legislative functions [Ch. X, § 9], division 
of these powers not being yet thought necessary. The new royal and 
Romanic judicial system killed out in France the jury-element present in 
old feudal justice, — this at precisely the time when the jury was becoming 
a great power in England. See Stubbs, Constitutional History, ch. xiii. 

^ In keeping with this was the new definiteness imported even into 
feudal law by St. Louis's famous * establishments.' This same king under- 
mined papal power as truly and as unwittingly as he did feudal. His 
' pragmatic sanction ' contained the principles of Gallicanism, subordinating 
church to state and setting firm limits to papal power in France. 'The 
ecclesiastical supremacy built up by a hero, crumbled under the strokes of 
a saint.' — Martin, IV, 310; Bastard d'Estang, ch. v. 



2io feudalism and the french monarchy 
§ 19 Philip the Fair 

Martin, vols, iv-vi. Hallam, ch. vii, pt. ii. Duruy^ 400 sqq. Mtlman, XI, vili sqq., 
XII. Tosti, Storia di Bonifazio VIII e di suoi tempi, 2 v. Kitchin, vol. i, bk. 
iii, ch. X. Guizot, 2d course, xv. 

This energetic monarch, 1285-13 14, continued Saint 
Louis's policy, but in a different spirit, less feudal, less 
religious, far less just.^ The age of crusades and of 
religious fanaticism was past, that of politics come. 
Philip was the 'lawyers' king,* the spirit of the pan- 
dects ^ swaying all his acts. Not without desire of con- 
quest or success therein,^ he labored chiefly to make his 
monarchy absolute. He (i) gets into his hands the 
coinage of money,* hitherto partaken by most of the 
great lords, (2) renders himself independent of his vas- 
sals by employing hired soldiers ^ and (3) secures the 
favor of the third estate by summoning their delegates 
to the states-general.^ This was in 1302, when Pope 
Boniface VIII excommunicated Philip for taxing the 
clergy. Influenced by the new study of canon law, 
this haughty pope renewed all the assumptions of Greg- 
ory VII and Innocent III.'^ But times had changed and 
excommunication no longer inspired the old terror. Un- 
popular as was Philip through the rigor and exactions 
of his rule, the pope proved more so. The Inquisition 
and the wealth and insatiable pecuniary demands of the 
clergy with the dissoluteness of the lives of many among 
them had alienated the popular heart. The bull clericis 
laicos^ forbidding all ecclesiastics to pay tribute unless 
permitted by Rome, awakened the more hostility from 
the limitation which Saint Louis had already put to 
papal authority in France, and although the charges of 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 211 

misconduct which the ausculta fili brought against Philip 
were mostly true, the latter found not only the states- 
general but the solid nation at his back against the 
pope. Boniface, defeated, died, and with him, so far as 
its power was concerned, his theory of the papacy. 
* The drama of Anagni is to be set against the drama of 
Canossa.'^ With the papacy fell its chief supporters in 
France, the Templars. The king's attack upon these, 
witnesses in the strongest manner to the power royalty 
had now attained, since they were numerous and wealthy, 
related to all the aristocracy of Europe, and nowise 
clearly guilty of the charges brought against them.^^ 

1 Martin, IV, 392, well sets forth how despicable Philip Fair's govern- 
ment was. Had it not been a means to something better than itself it 
would appear even less tolerable than feudalism. We are in doubt whether 
to approve his motives in attacking the Inquisition, forbidding clerks to 
practise in civil courts or any but manifest heretics to be imprisoned on 
religious grounds. 

2 SeeCh. Ill, § 11, esp. n. 5. 

3 He took Guyenne from Edward I of England, and conquered all 
Flanders except Ghent. Flanders was then the richest land in Europe. 
He inherited his father's war with Aragon, in which he was less successful, 
though retaining Navarre. 

4 Saint Louis had wrought at this problem but had succeeded only in 
imparting a measure of honesty to the seignorial coinage without getting 
rid of this. Our present word 'seigniorage' to denote the amount by 
which a piece's real value falls below its face value attests the manner in 
which feudal * seigniors ' turned coining to their own advantage. The 
practice of Philip was no better. See Martin, IV, 426. 

^ The beginning in France of standing armies. 

6 An assembly of the barons, chief ecclesiastics and deputies of com- 
munes, 2 or 3 from each, 'to deliberate on certain affairs concerning in the 
highest degree king, kingdom, church and all and sundry.' Its prototype 
was the ancient national assembly, now so long in desuetude, yet this of 
April 10, 1302, was a fresh beginning, and is justly reckoned as the first 
states-general in French history. Had the feudal aristocrats been wise 



212 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

they would, as they then could, have prevented this influential precedent 
of summoning burghers. 

7 See Ch. V, §§ 13 sqq. 

^ These papal bulls are usually, as here, named by their opening words. 
On Saint Louis's attitude to the papal power in France, see last §, n. 5. 
In the unam sanctum Boniface even exceeded in assumption his famous 
predecessors named. I, he said, am emperor and king in being pope. 
He was the pontiff who founded the University of Rome, mainly to ad- 
vance the claims and widen the knowledge of canon law. See Creighton, 
Papacy during Reformation, Int.; Voigt, Wiedei'belebtmg d. kl. Alter- 
thums, II, 44. 

^ Martin. Wm. of Nogaret, a bright but pliant emissary of Philip, went 
to Anagni where Boniface was sojourning, and, allying himself with 
Sciarra Colonna, the pope's deadliest enemy, and bribing the militia of 
Anagni, secured Boniface's person. Colonna even smote the pontiff, 
86 years of age, with his ironed gauntlet, which must have been a con- 
cause of his death. See Duruy, 410. The popes now became creatures 
of French kings. Omitting Benedict XI, the first [reigning but 7 or 8 
months], Boniface's 7 immediate successors resided at Avignon [papal 
territory indeed from 1348-1791 yet within and subject to France], and 
the western church was as subservient to France as the eastern of old 
to the emperor. Creighton, I, 22 sq., shows how this enslavement pro- 
ceeded from the introduction of Anjou into Naples [Ch. V, last § and 
notes], the precise arrangement which popes supposed would set them free. 

10 On the suppression of the Templars, see Michelet, France, vol. iii; 
Milman, XII, i, ii, v; Werner, Templars in Cyprus [a poem]. 

§ 20 Monarchy Supreme 

Duruy, Temps Modernes, ch. ii. Kirk, Hist, of Charles the Bold. Commines, 
Memoirs [of Louis XI, Charles VIII and Charles the Bold]. Student's France, bk. iv. 
Kitchin, vol. ii. bk. i. 

At Philip the Fair's death in 13 14 the French mon- 
archy stood forth as a victorious national and political 
power, past all serious danger.^ Even the desperate 
feudal reaction under Charles VII and Louis XI,^ 1422- 
'83, was unavailing. If the Hundred Years' War,^ I339- 
1453) weakened the monarchy absolutely, it precisely as 



FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 213 

in England much strengthened it relatively to all the 
feudal elements of society. Many old aristocratic fami- 
lies were ruined, standing armies were introduced, for- 
eign war had deepened and quickened national feeling. 
The end of the fifteenth century saw feudal opposition 
to royalty practically dead, France one state and people 
with but one law for all. The monarchy after Louis XI 
was theoretically as well as practically absolute, the 
states-general at Tours in 1484 propounding the maxim 
that 'all justice emanates from the king.' Francis I 
could confirm his ordinances by the ^ car tel est notre 
bon plaisir,^ and the descendants of those lords before 
whom early Capetians had trembled learned to beg as a 
distinguished honor the privilege of passing the king 
his food at dinner or his night-robe when he retired. 
Two errors must here be avoided, that of supposing the 
whole of feudalism to have vanished with its power 
against the king,* and that of regarding this victory by 
monarchy immediately a victory for freedom.^ To a 
great extent it was the reverse. Kings protected com- 
munal liberties only while the communes were of aid 
in fighting aristocracy. The aristocracy, once humbled, 
found the king ever its trusty ally against the third 
estate, which in the great Revolution had to overthrow 
both together. 

1 Philip Augustus was the last prospective French king to be crowned 
during a father's lifetime, as had been thought the necessary course among 
the earlier Capetians and in the empire [Ch. V, § 9, n. 2]. Philip the 
Bold's coronation was delayed months after Saint Louis's death. 

2 Duruy and Kirk, as above. To Louis XI at his accession, 1461, the 
outlook was indeed forbidding. The aristocracy made its last great fight 
for supremacy in the so-called Ligiie du Men public, formed by 500 princes 
or lords and headed by the famous Charles the Bold, or Rash, duke of 



214 FEUDALISM AND THE FRENCH MONARCHY 

Burgundy. The latter's domains about equalled Louis's in size [see Bryce, 
Appendix A], and he was bent on enlarging them into a vast kingdom con- 
terminous with that which the Treaty of Verdun, 843, had given to Lothar 
[Ch. V, § 7, n. 2], a plan necessitating his seizure of Switzerland. He 
was encouraged rather than aided against Louis by Edward IV of Eng- 
land, now in mid-struggle against Lancaster. But Charles, falling out 
with Emperor Frederic III, besieges Neuss, then attacks the Swiss, giving 
Louis leisure to subdue all his other turbulent vassals. Charles's fall in 
the battle of Nancy, against the Swiss, Jan. 5, 1477, left the French king 
absolute master. It must be remembered that Charles the Bold was duke 
and vassal of France only in respect to the southwestern section of his 
territories, i.e., the northwestern part of the ancient kingdom of Bur- 
gundy, joined to France by Clovis's sons [Ch. IV, § 17], now the depart- 
ments of Cbte-d'' Or, Yonne and Nikvre, and that for Franche-Comte, nearly 
the present department of Haute Sdone, he was a count and a vassal of the 
empire. For his power in the Netherlands also, and the complex manner 
of its rise, see Freeman, Hist'l Geog., 300 sqq. Duruy sums up Louis's 
work at T. M. p. 25. Cf. Michelet [Eng.], bk. xi, ch. ii, Martin, vols, 
viii, ix, and Willert, Reign of Louis XI. The year of Louis's death, 1483, 
witnessed the birth of Luther and of Rabelais. 

^ The neatest account of this war from the French side is Duruy, 
Moyen Age, ch. xxvii. Read also Student's France, bk. iv, and Kitchin, 
bk. iv. [in vol. i]. 

* The League and the Fronde of Huguenot days were in large part 
feudal phenomena. See later sections of Ch. IX, also Ch. X, §§ 3-5. 

^ Even the new civil law was nearly as faulty through its subtleties as 
the feudal had been through irregularity. Michelet, int. to vol. vii, seems 
to conceive the victory of monarchy as a downright curse, worse than 
feudalism. This is too severe. Interesting to mark how in Norman Eng- 
land, where the barons were fewer and more united than in France yet 
the king more advantageously placed from the first, neither party was 
ever in condition to slight the commons, and liberty strode forward early 
and strongly. Ch. IX, § 18, n. i. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER VII 

Islam ; Duruy, Moyen Age, Livres II, VII. Gilman, Saracens [Story 
of Nations Ser.]. Guizot, H. of France, I. Gibbon,** Chaps. L-LXX. 
Milman,* L. C, IV, i, ii. ' Mohammedanism,' * in Encyc. Brit., and in 
Lalor's Cyclopaedia. Draper, Int'l Develop't of Eur., xi, xiii, xvi. Muir, 
Early Caliphate; Rise and Decline of Islam. Neale, H. of Islam, 2 v. 
Ockley [in Bohn], H. of the Saracens. Bosworth-Smith, Mohammed 
and Mohammedanism [Roy. Inst. Lectures]. Stobart, Islam and its 
Founder, v. Ranke, IVeligesch* Th. V. Hertzberg, Gesch. d. Byzan- 
tiner u. d. osmanischen Reichs. Arnold, Islam, its Character and Rel. to 
Ch'ty. Ali Malmi [a native of India], L. and Teachings of Mohammed 
[an apology]. Dozi, Essai sur Vhist. d. Islamisme. Weil, Mohammed : 
Leben u. Lehre; Gesch. d. islam. V'dlker ; Gesch. der Khalifen, 5 v. 
Sprenger, Leben u. Lehre Mohajumed's,*"^ 3 v. [the best]. Freeman, 
H. and Conq. of Saracens.** Kremer, Gesch. d. herrschenden Ideen d. 
Lslams. Fairbairn, Policy of Islam [Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1882]. La 
Jonquiere, Hist, de V empire Ottoman depuis Ics origines, etc. Miiller 
[in Oncken], Islam im Morgen- u. Abendland**' [i vol. out]. Hughes, 
Dictionary of Islam [Scribner]. The Crusades: 'Crusades,' in Encyc. 
Brit., and in Lalor's Cyclopaedia. Cox, Crusades * [Ep. of Hist.] . Michaud, 
H. of Crusades, 3 v. [last ed. 1840]. Mills, do., 2 v. Michelet, France, 
vol. ii. Kugler [in Oncken], Gesch. d. I'Crenzziige**- [the ablest: see 
ch. i, n., for literature]. Wilken, do., 7 v. [1807-32]. v. Sybel, Gesch. 
d. ersten ICreuzzuges ** ; Kl. hist. Schriften [several essays]; H. and Lit. 
of the Crusades.** Poole, ' Egypt,' in Encyc. Brit. Funk, Gemcelde 
aus dem Zeitalter d. Kreuzzilge** 3 v. Prutz, KultU7'gesch. d. Zeitalter 
d. KreuzzUge [1883]. Henne-am-Rhyn, Ktilturgesch. d. KreuzzUge 
[1884]. Raumer, Hohenstaiifeft* 6 v. Choiseul-Daillecourt, L'in- 
fiuence des Croisades.** Heeren [^Hist. Werke, //], Folgen d. Kreuz- 
zUge.*- [The 2 wks. last named shared the French Institute prize in 1808.] 
Heyd, Levanthandel im Mittelalter** 2 v. Finlay, H. of Greece,** 7 v. 
Hopf, Gesch. Griechetilafids** [in Ersch u. Gruber's Encyclopadie]. 
Scott [Sir W.], Count Robert of Paris. Stephens, Lect. on H. of Fr., 
vi and vii. [The works of Giesebrecht and Hertzberg mentioned in 
bibliogg. to Chaps. IV and V contain valuable matter on hist, of Crusades.] 



CHAPTER VII 

ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 



§ I Arabia before Mohammed 

Gibbon, ch. 1. Sale's Koran, prelim. Disc, i. Mibnan, IV, i. Kreel, Vorislam. 
Fliigel, Gesck. d. Araber. Duruy, ch. vi. 'Arabia,' in Encyc. Brit. 

To the Teutons, Slavs and Huns setting forth for 
the boiUeversement of the world, succeeded the Arabs. 
Upon these remote nomads in their isolated home the 
great classic peoples and ages had scarcely exerted any 
influence.^ Of the conquerors : Alexander, the Ptole- 
mies, Pompey, Augustus, Trajan, who meditated Ara- 
bian conquest, the last alone gained foothold in the 
land, and he only in Petraea.^ The seventh century 
found the Arabs as they were earlier and are now, in a 
state of nature rather than of culture, intelligent though 
more imaginative than deep, warlike, living in clans, 
without ability or desire for strong or central govern- 
ment. Chronicles and myths were their only history, 
Sabianism^ their dominant religion. Mecca with its 
Caaba ^ was already a national sanctuary, the centre of 
a sort of fetish cult, whose exact nature is unknown. 
Judaism was present, some tribes having embraced it. 
The Bible existed in Arabic and was respected. Chris- 
tians, mostly heretics, as Ebionites,^ Arians, Nestorians, 
Monophysites, had sought refuge there and disseminated 



2l8 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

their doctrines with more or less success. It resulted 
that monotheism had secured wide sway, and that 
among the more thoughtful, idolatry was less a convic- 
tion than a habit. 

1 See Horace, Odes, I, xxix, III, xxiv, to the effect that the kings of 
Sabsea had never yet been conquered and that their immense wealth w*s 
yet * intact.' The very expedition to which Horace refers in the earlier 
passage cited, i.e., that of Aelius Gallus in B.C. 24, under Augustus, was 
an entire as well as a very costly failure. Alexander the Great intended 
to invade Arabia but died before executing his purpose. 

2 The triangular piece of territory between the two branches of the 
Red Sea. 

^ Star-worship, originally derived from Babylon, but in Mohammed's 
time modified by Christian elements. See Sale's Discourse, section i. The 
Sabians were tolerated by Mohammed on paying tribute, and were known 
in later centuries as the Christians of St. John the Baptist. 

^ Gibbon, ch. 1, has a good description of this very ancient temple. 
When it was purified by Mohammed of its 360 idols, one of these was 
found to be a Byzantine image of the Virgin, the infant Christ in her arms. 
— Duruy, Moyen Age, 95. Duruy believes that part of the early Chris- 
tian influences in Arabia were from Abyssinia. The Abyssinians were 
Christians, and had conquered S. W. Arabia [Yemen] in 525 A.D. 

^ The Ebionites were those numerous primitive Christians who, while 
accepting Christ, still held to all the Jewish observances. The other sects 
named are briefly described at Ch. IH, § 19. Cf. Hagenbach, H. of Doc- 
trines, index, and Sale's Disc, ii. 



§ 2 Mohammed 

Milman, IV, i. Draper, xi. Wellhausen, Muhanimed in Medina [Lit. Centralblatt, 
44, 1882]. /rz/z«^, Mahomet and his Successors. 'Mohammedanism,' in Encyc. 
Brit. 

Mohammed originated much, but less than is com- 
monly supposed. Among the world's great men he is 
the hardest to judge fairly, — not an impostor, nor a 
mere fanatic, yet fanatical, politic, selfish and unscrupu- 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 219 

lous while deeply religious, nervous, given to visions, 
perhaps mentally deranged. ^ His early history is little 
known.2 He was of noble blood, handsome, eloquent. 
He had travelled much, meeting both Christians and 
Jews, unfortunately learning of Jesus mostly from apoc- 
ryphal^ sources, and of Judaism from the Talmud.* 
The great, inspiring idea which he obtained hence, lift- 
ing him above his people's superstition and making him 
master of their hearts and wills, was the unity of God. 
* There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his 
prophet.' ^ Forced in consequence of his attack on 
idolatry to flee from Mecca, his temper grows harder, 
his ambition and methods more worldly, his teaching 
less spiritual. Tangible and base rewards are promised 
to believers, who now multiply more rapidly and appeal 
to the sword.^ 

1 He is said to have been subject to epileptic fits. 

2 Mohammed belonged to the Koreisch tribe or sept, and to the 
Hashim family. The tribe claimed descent from Ishmael. The Hashims 
had charge of the Caaba. The family tie all Arabians held sacred. Family 
rivalry caused in great part the sectarian quarrels among Mohammedans. 
See § 4, and notes. 

^ I.e., those multitudinous second and third century writings about 
Christ and early Christianity composed in imitation of the New Testament 
documents. See 'Apocrypha' and 'Canon' in Encyc. Brit., Hilgenfeld, 
Nov. Test, extra Canonem Receptum, and Hone, N. T. Apocrypha. 

* The Talmud is a collection of Jewish traditions, authoritatively [in 
Jews' view] illustrating and complementing the Old Testament. It has 
two parts, the Mischna, which is the original tradition proper, and the 
Gemara, or later comments of various Rabbis upon the Mischna. The 
whole was for long orally transmitted, but the Mischna began to be re- 
duced to writing about 200 a.d. 

^ See Koran, ch. xxxv ^ndi passim. 

® Bestmann, Anfdnge d. katholischen Christenthutns u. d. Islams 
[Nordlingen, 1884]. 



220 islam and the crusades 

§ 3 His Doctrine 

Draper, xi. Sale, Koran, with prelim. Disc, iii-vii. Kreel, Ueber den Koran. 
Sayous, Jestis Christ d'apres Mohammed, etc. Noldecke, Gesch. d. Korans. 
Weil, Historisch- kritische Efilet'tttng in den Koran. 

IThis is learned from two sources : i Al Koran, a code 
both civil and religious, alleged by Mohammed to have 
been revealed to him from God. It is a mixture of 
meaningless rhapsody with much good moral and relig- 
ious matter from Bible ^ and Talmud. \ Noticeable is its 
decided exaltation of the female sex. 2 The Sunna, or 
oral tradition, which was committed to writing long 
after the prophet's death. This is rejected by the 
Shiites. Mohammed was a severe monotheist. He 
regarded Jesus,^ as he did Moses, a prophet true and 
great, but only human. The worship of him as divine, 
like adoration of images, he thought damnable sin. He 
made much of faith, the very word ' moslem ' or * musul- 
man' meaning 'believer,' and ^ islam' 'surrender to Al- 
lah,' but still more of works, prayers, ablutions, fasts, 
temperance, benevolence, pilgrimages to Mecca, which 
remained the national sanctuary, fighting and braving 
death for the faith. The last he set forth as par excel- 
lence meritorious. Divine predestination was empha- 
sized and exhibited as absolute, and solemn judgment 
declared in store for men, as well as resurrection of the 
body and eternal retribution. It was urged that no 
true believer could be lost, no unbeliever saved. 

1 The Koran's ever-recurring reminders of God's mercy have a distinct 
Biblical ring. So its rules concerning females and orphans much resemble 
those of the Mosaic law. Daughters are to inherit half as much as sons. 
Husbands must possess authority but are enjoined to use this with tender- 
ness. Monogamy is recommended as pleasing to God, as is the manumis- 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 221 

sion of slaves, and in no case is a man to have more than four wives at 
once [ch. iv]. Mohammed's command also did away with the old Arab 
custom of burying infants alive. 

2 Mohammed to the last denied his own ability to work miracles al- 
though admitting that Jesus possessed such. He admits also the miracu- 
lous birth of Jesus [ch. xix]. Gibbon [voL v, io8, ed. Milm.] will have 
it that the doctrine of the immaculate conception is from the Koran. 

§ 4 Mohammedan Conquest 

Mzlman, IV, ii. Duruy, ch. vi. Sale's Disc, viii. Gibbon, 1-lii. Kugler, ch. i. 

The new faith spread with incredible speed.^ Mo- 
hammed died master of Mecca, prophet, priest and king 
to practically the whole of Arabia. Yet himself only 
initiated the enormous conquests which illustrate his 
name. . In less than a century, spite of their mutual 
contests,^ constant, fierce, extensive, Islam's armies, of- 
fering everywhere the alternatives, ' Koran, tribute or 
the sword,' ^ had conquered more than half the known 
world: westward, Africa, Spain, South France and the 
main Mediterranean isles ; eastward, Persia to beyond 
the Indus ; northward, all Asiatic Rome except Asia 
Minor. Scourges of East Rome, as the Goths and 
Vandals once were of West, they repeatedly beset the 
very gates of Constantinople. Rome itself narrowly 
escaped falling into their hands.* For a century Chris- 
tianity trembled for its existence. 

1 571, Mohammed born. 
622, Hegira, July 16. 
630, Mecca taken. 

632, Mohammed dies. Abu-Bekr Caliph, of Sunnites; 
Shiites recognize AH. All Arabia Mohammedan. 
634-'44, Omar Caliph and Emir. Conquest of the East, including 
Persia, also of Egypt. 



222 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

644 -'56, Othmatt Caliph. Further conquest in North Africa. 

656-61, AH CaUph, opposed and put to death by Sunnites, who 
come to power in the 

661-750, Om??iiad diyn2isX.y, hereditary, ruling from Damascus. 

707, Africa conquered to the Atlantic. The Moors. 

711, Battle of Xeres de la Frontera : Moors wrest Spain from 
the Visigoths. 

732, Battle of Poitiers. Martell. Greatest reach of Mohammedan 
sway. 

750-1258, Abbassids of Bagdad supplant the Ommiads in Asia. Ab- 
durrahman escapes to Spain and founds the 

756-1031, Ommiad Caliphate of Cordova. Abdurrahman, Almanzor. 

935, The Emir al Onira secures the temporal power at Bagdad, the 
Caliph retaining only the spiritual. 

968, Fatimite Caliphs in Africa. 
2 The schism between Shiites and Sunnites grew into that between 
strict and liberal Mohammedans in general. The Shiites wished to keep 
the Caliph's office in Mohammed's family. Abu-Bekr had been M.'s 
father-in-law, Fatima was his daughter, Ali his son-in-law, Fatima's hus- 
band. Abbas M.'s great-grandson. Fatimites, Alides and Abbassids were 
therefore Mohammedans of a straiter type than Othman and the Ommiads, 
the latter representing more the Koreisch tribe, who had first driven the 
prophet from Mecca, hating the Hashims [§ 2, n. 2], ignoring the family 
principle, using wine, etc. They were bitterly opposed by the Arabian 
Mohammedans, whether in Arabia or about Babylon, where many immi- 
grants from the mother-land had settled. At last the family of Abbas, 
under the black banner of Abul- Abbas [Gibbon, lii], took up the cause of 
Ali, whom Moawiah, the first Ommiad Caliph, had assassinated, and won 
the caliphate for themselves and for the family principle again in 750. 
Of the Ommiads [white banner] all were slain but Abdurrahman, who 
escaped to Spain. As Damascus had been the Ommiad capital Bagdad 
became that of the Abbassids. After Abul-Abbas, Almanzor the Victo- 
rious, 754-'75, Haroun Alraschid, or the Just, 786-809, and Almamun, 
8i3-'33, were the great Abbassid Caliphs. The same zeal for legitimacy 
gave to the Fatimites, professing descent from Fatima and Ali, the ascend- 
ency in Africa. This quarrel has come down to our own time, the Turks 
being liberals, the Mohammedans of Egypt and the Soudan orthodox, 
heirs of the Fatimite faith and zeal. This is understood to have been at 
the bottom of the rebelHon headed by El Mahdi in the Soudan and Arabi 
Bey in Egypt against the Turks [whom the English aided] in i882-'83. 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 22$ 

3 This meant that peoples must either accept Islam, retain their faith 
at the price of such tribute as pleased the Caliphs, or be exterminated. 
Notice how soon the religion of Mohammed ceased to be an Arabian 
affair, becoming ecumenical, held, proclaimed and enforced by Persians, 
Turks, Copts, Moors, Goths, etc. By the middle of the 8th century the 
proportion of real Arabian population in these out-lying realms began 
visibly to decrease. Even earlier Arabia had ceased to send out troops, 
its inhabitants tending back to the Bedouin life. 

* See Milman, V, iii. J 

§ 5 The Causes 

Milman, vol. ii, 113, 163 sqq. Duruy, 97 sqq. Sale's Disc, ii. 

For this gigantic revolution history is at a loss fully 
to account. The main secret of it, beyond question, 
lay not in numbers, but in a certain wonderful inspira- 
tion which, at this particular juncture, transformed the 
Arabian people, due to (i) the truth in their religion, 
especially its central idea, divine unity,^ (2) the enthu- 
siasm and skill of leaders, notably Mohammed, Amrou, 
Chaled and Omar, (3) the new sense of national unity, 
(4) hope of rewards, both temporal and eternal,^ (5) fatal- 
ism.^ 'Woe,' preached Mohammed, 'to the Musulman 
who hugs his hearth rather than go fight. Death he 
cannot shun, for the term of life is fixed. Fear the 
heat of combats .? Hell is hotter ! Flee } Paradise is 
before you, hell's flames behind.' Also, Islam found 
Rome and Persia weak. Both these empires were large : 
in each, provinces lay remote from the capital, difficult 
to administer. All Rome's Asiatic and African subjects 
were disaffected politically, theologically.^ The Coptic 
and all the African Christians welcomed, if they did not 
invite, the invaders. Worst, the corruption of eastern 
Christianity had now rendered it spiritless, as unworthy 



224 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

as it was unable, successfully to oppose this new and 
dreadful foe.^ 

1 It can hardly be doubted that the early Musulmans held a purer 
monotheism than the eastern Christians of their time. They were also the 
peers of those Christians in all elements of conduct and character. Their 
aggressive belief encouraged and may have originated iconoclasm [Ch. IV, 
§ 19]. An imaginative race just opening its mind to the conceptions of 
unity and moral order in the universe could not but find them infinitely 
stimulating. 

2 Many even of the latter were not of the most spiritual nature. How- 
ever, one cannot in fairness to the prophet interpret his sensuous pictures 
of the future state so coarsely as his Christian critics have usually done. 

3 Nor did the prophet in urging this, fall, as all the logic-books imply, 
into fallacy. It is strictly true that if the term of one's life is fixed one 
will die at that limit whatever he does or omits. Nor are urging and ex- 
hortation unreasonable under the hypothesis named, as they may be among 
the fated conditions to the fated result. Cf. Cicero, de fato, xii and xiii, 
Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille, I, 356. 

* See Montesquieu, Grandeur and Decadence of the Roman Empire, 
chaps, xxi, xxii. 

5 Milman, vol. i, 24, Michelet, France, bk. iv, ch. iii. 

§ 6 Spain and France 

Hallam, ch. Iv. Coppee, Arabian Conquest of Spain. Viadot, Mores d'Espagne. 
Irving, Conquest of Spain. 

Incorporating the Berbers or Moors,^ the Saracens 
crossed into Spain, invited by the Gothic traitor, Count 
Julian, and enraged by the aid which the Visigoths had 
furnished to their Byzantine foes in Africa. The Goths 
now held practically the entire peninsula,^ having ab- 
sorbed the Sueves and driven the Byzantines from the 
coast. The state had acquired still further strength by 
becoming catholic,^ yet proved far weaker than it seemed. 
I Its elective^ character caused numerous bitter fac- 
tions and left the nation practically without a head. 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 22$ 

2 The poor and the Jews, oppressed, hailed and helped 
the Saracens as their deliverers. 3 Owing to the long 
peace that had prevailed arms and military discipline 
had been laid aside, battlements and strongholds razed. 
4 The clergy was powerful and overbearing. The 
Council of Toledo had become a national parliament, 
wherein, despite the presence of lay members, bishops 
were omnipotent, hating, hated, and at best poor ad- 
visers for time of war. Of the order and character of 
events in this revolution we know little. From their 
costly but complete victory at Xeres the Moors pressed 
rapidly northward. In eight years they had subdued 
the whole Gothic realm except the little kingdom of 
Asturias.^ The crisis for Christianity when, in 720, 
they passed the Pyrenees, was not then appreciated. 
The Prankish kingdom was distracted by internal feuds, 
selfish and temporary, not Christian, interests ruled the 
hour. Eudo of Aquitaine was left to oppose the Sara- 
cens ten years alone, and to be crushed by them. Mar- 
tell himself assisting, before Martell would draw sword 
against the common foe. The victory of Poitiers,^ 732, 
that so solemn moment in history, was due less to the 
devotion of Christians than to the dissensions of their 
enemy. After raging seven days it was a drawn battle, 
although the Moors retired next night, Poitiers remain- 
ing the northern term of their march. The Franks 
required seven years to cut their way again to the 
Pyrenees, Septimania" obeyed the Crescent till 759, the 
brilliant career of the Caliphate of Cordova now began. 

1 These peoples were a mixture, not yet complete, of Carthaginian, 
Roman and Greek with old-Mauretanian racial elements. See Chenier, 
Recherches historiques sur les Maures, 3 v. The first Moorish landing in 



226 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

Spain was in May, 711, the decisive 3 days' battle at Xeres de la Frontera 
occurring the next July, The general who headed the invasion was Tarik, 
from whom Gibraltar took its name [Gibel-al Tarik =: * Tarik's promon- 
tory']. Dahn, K'dnige d. Germanen, V, 227, throws some doubt upon 
Julian's treason. 

2 See Ch. IV, §1, and n. 5, Justinian had recovered certain Spanish 
coast-towns from the Visigoths. They were all now Gothic again. The 
Sueves had been swallowed up in 585. 

^ The conversion took place under King Reccared, 586-601, but the 
Spanish church seems never to have been fully obedient to Rome till the 
iron discipline of Pope Innocent III, 1198-1216, forced it to be. See 
Milman, IX, vi. Catholic position was advantageous on the whole, but 
the lingering sympathy for Arianism was among the causes of weakness. 

* At the time of the invasions the principles of heredity and election in 
the kingship both prevailed in the German nations. The Franks developed 
the former, the Visigoths the latter, 

^ This principality, locked in between the Pyrenees and the sea, was at 
no time in Musulman hands. See § 16, also 'Asturias' in Encyc. Brit. 
Asturias was the germ whence first Leon then Castile developed. The 
heir-apparent to the Spanish throne has been since 1388 called the Prince 
[or Princess] of Asturias, — at present a mere honorary title though for 
centuries much more than this. 

^ Or Tours. The battle occurred on a plain between Tours and Poi- 
tiers but nearer the latter. Our accounts of affairs at that time betray no 
sign that Christians were aware of it as a crisis for their faith. See the 
excellent discussion by Kaufmann, Deutsche Gesckichie, II, 225 sqq. 

' Septimania was the belt of coast-land from the Pyrenees nearly or 
quite to the western mouth of the Rhone. With these statements com- 
pare Ch. V, §§ 2, 3, and notes, also Milman, vol. iii, 84. During the 
entire 9th century no point on the Mediterranean was safe from Moslem 
attack. Sicily passed to the crescent about 850. 

§ 7 The East 

Gibbon, xxxii, li-liii. Durtiy, chaps, vi, vii. Weber, Weltgesch., I, 556 sqq. 

Persia yielded to Islam as readily as Spain, far more 
so than Africa. Its reward came with Abbassid victory,^ 
which was essentially a resurrection of the old Persian 
Empire,^ with a new religion and with Arab chiefs for 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 22/ 

kings. East Rome proved to be Islam's sturdiest foe.^ 
Statements of its weakness during this period have 
usually been much exaggerated. Its strength in ex- 
tremity is rather the striking and inexplicable fact. 
Emperor Heraclius had indeed been forced/ so early as 
62,8, to abandon greater Asia, and some of his suc- 
cessors 5 paid tribute, but two terrible Ommiad sieges 
by both land and sea, seven years, 672-9, and again 
two years, 717-19, were pressed against Constantinople 
in vain. So of eight invasions by the great Haroun 
Alraschid, 786-809. Severe winters, the ability and 
valor of emperors and their generals, the newly in- 
vented Greek fire, and Byzantine skill in military de- 
fence equalling that of the old Romans, enabled the 
city to defy the art, desperation and countless hordes ^ 
with which the Musulmans attacked. Note too, that Cor- 
dova now aided eastern Christendom, as Abbassids did 
western. Haroun and Karl the Great were firm allies.'' 
These Christian victories were far more important than 
that of Poiters.^ Islam, bold and strong through con- 
quest, brought its supreme energy and resources to the 
onset. Had it succeeded, Europe was lost. If the 
Saracens, a maritime power since the first caliph, 647, 
long kept the advantage at sea, Nicephorus Phocas, 
963-9, recovered Crete and Antioch, and John Zimi- 
sces, 969-'76, marched conquering to Bagdad and the 
Tigris. It seems as if but for the Turks ^ Rome might 
have won back all her old domains. 

1 See § 4, n. 2. It was the purpose of the Sasanian line of Persian 
kings to bring their empire back to the hmits and the glory which it had 
in the days of Cyrus and Xerxes. Shapur [Sapor] I, the second of the 
line, took the Emperor Valerian prisoner in 257, and Julian lost his life, 



228 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

June 26, 363, fighting against Shapur II near Ctesiphon. Khosrau [Chos- 
roes] I, ' the Just/ 53i-'79 a.d., brought the Sasanian kingdom to its 
greatest extent and renown^ ruling from the Mediterranean to the Indus. 
Khosrau II, 590-628, took Jerusalem in June, 614, and, according to 
tradition, carried the true cross into captivity. It was sent back, and on 
Sept. 14, 629, a date which the Feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross 
still commemorates, the emperor Heraclius, who had re-conquered most of 
Roman Asia, solemnly set it up again in Jerusalem. Immediately after 
this reverse and partly in consequence thereof, Persia experienced dreadful 
internal contentions and civil wars, from which it was still suffering when 
the Moslem invasion came. Best history in English of these events is in 
* Persia,' Encyc. Brit. 

2 Einhard, Vita Karoli, c. 16, calls Haroun Alraschid 'king of the 
Persians.' 

^ ' We apply very freely the words decay, decline, fall, to the Roman 
empire of the 4th and 5th centuries, and effete is the standing epithet of 
its eastern division, even when the mighty Macedonian dynasty goes forth 
conquering and to conquer from the foot of Ararat to the foot of ^tna. 
The abiding life of the eastern empire still seems to be to many minds 
the hardest of lessons.' — Freeman, Contemp. Rev., May, 1884. Even 
Alexius, at the time of the first crusade, who could vanquish the Normans, 
annihilate the Patzinaks and keep well at bay the Turks, was no weakling. 
See Kugler, pp. 12, 13. 

* This brave emperor had no sooner recovered his eastern realms from 
the Persian than they were again wrested from him by the Musulman 
armies. By 702 the wave of Musulman conquest had reached China. In 
711 the same caliph ruled in Spain and in Scinde. 

5 Irene, 78o-'97, and Nicephorus, 8o2-'i3. They had to send the 
tribute in coins bearing the image of Haroun himself, to whom it was 
sent. 

^ The caHph Solyman in 717 commanded against Constantinople an 
army of 120,000 men and a navy of 1800 sail. Haroun's army in 806 
numbered 135,000 mercenaries besides a vast host of volunteers, all 
schooled in the best military science. 

"^ At Karl's imperial coronation in 800, he, according to Einhard, re- 
ceived from Haroun the keys of the Holy Sepulchre, besides vestes et 
arotnata et ceteras orientaliti7n terraru?7i opes, and other ingentia dotia, 
including an elephant. — Vita Karoli, c. 16. 

^ This crisis being second in importance for Christianity only to the 
raising of the siege of Vienna in 1683 by John Sobieski, Not till after 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 229 

that, says Kugler, ' did fear of the crescent's arms gradually subside in 
Europe's heart.' For Nicephorus Phocas and Zimisces, Gibbon, xlviii, lii 
ad fin. 

9 See § lo. 

§ 8 The Civilization of Islam 

Gibbon, lii. Diiruy, no, 122. Milman, vol. ii, 171. Draper, xiii. Renan, Aver- 
roes et Vaverrdisme. Lane, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages. Weber, IVelt- 
gesch. I, 557 sqq. 

From the hellenism now pervading the East,^ the 
Arabs derived a new intellectual life and zeal, by which 
they considerably aided to advance the world's civiliza- 
tion. In the early middle age Spain, not Constanti- 
nople, was the main medium of classical light to central 
Europe. Literature, philosophy, arts, sciences flour- 
ished in all Musulman capitals before Christian Europe 
emerged from barbarism.^ So did architecture, music 
and arabesque work, but neither sculpture nor painting. 
I We seem to be indebted to Mohammedan poets for 
several forms of verse if not for rhyme.^ However, in 
literature at large, Islam's scholars, so patient and curi- 
ous, did little more than copy, comment and transmit. 
Study did not set them free. The peoples who obeyed 
the prophet were apparently incapable of attaining cul- 
ture, literary or other, in its finest forms. Greek was 
as good as unknown even to their learned, oratory and 
belles-lettres they neglected, their history was wholly un- 
critical. 2 Of philosophers the Arabians cultivated 
Aristotle alone, and only through Arabic translations 
of Syriac ones. In this department also, Avicenna and 
Averroes aside, there was little originality though great 
industry. It was in Arabic-Latin versions that Aris- 
totle,* Theophrastus and the other great Greeks whom 



230 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

they knew, were first introduced to Christian savans. 
3 The Arabian thinkers were especially creative in 
science, and in astronomy, geography, medicine and 
surgery they led the world.^ The observatory of Samar- 
cand long antedated the earliest in Europe. Arabian 
astronomers calculated the length of the earth's great 
circle, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the precession of 
the equinoxes, and perfected algebra and the Arabic 
notation, knowledge of both which they probably de- 
rived from Alexandria. 4 The Arabians, famous invent- 
ors, gave the world paper, which doubled the value of 
printing when that came, arabesque decoration, the 
source of so many modern forms of ornamentation, dis- 
tillation, a large number of medicines, and many novel- 
ties in arms, agriculture and business. They are be- 
lieved to have introduced the ogive ^ from West Asia, 
and gunpowder and the compass from China. 

1 See Ch, III, § 7. 2 See Ch. VIII, § 3. 3 See Ch. V, § 5, n. 2. 

* Except the Kar-qyoplai and the nepi ep/xTjudas, which existed in a 
Latin translation by Boethius directly from the original. 

^ Draper, xiii, is best on this. Cf. Gibbon and Duruy, as above, and 
Choiseul-Daillecourt, i6i sq. The French chainbre des comptes did not 
adopt Arabic figures till the 17th century. Michelet. 

^ The pointed arch of Gothic architecture. This origin of it is how- 
ever not established. On the compass, Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. ii. Chess, 
Gibbon avers, came from Persia to Greece. In arms both offensive and 
defensive the Moslems patterned after the Romans, whom they rivalled in 
the use of them. On a march their army fortified its camp each night. 
The art of besieging they well understood and had all the devices and 
gear therefor. They used, with little success to be sure, engineers in fire- 
proof clothing, drilled to fight the Greek fire, also bows and arrows, spears, 
lances, greaves, helmets and coats of mail. Infantry formed their main 
arm, though their cavalry was choice, efficient and doubly paid. Camels 
furnished them the best means of transportation then known, giving the 
crescent's armies in this respect great advantage over the Roman. Their 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 23 1 

order of battle was the parallelogram with a longer side facing toward the 
foe. Usually it awaited , the hostile charge, then rushed forward with 
fury. The above applies best to the military system of Haroun Alraschid 
and his distinguished son, Almaraun, — to the forces which East Rome 
was called to encounter. Gibbon, Hi, discusses the Greek fire. On the 
whole lopic, Jahn, Gesch. d. Kriegszvesens [with Atlas, illustrating modes 
of offence and defence from earliest times]. 



§ 9 Its Decline 

Palmer, Haroun Alraschid [N. Plutarch Ser.]. Duruy, ch. vii. Gibbon, Hi. 

Caliphs often ruled well and in government too Islam 
contributed somewhat to civilization.^ Spain especially, 
attained under the crescent unprecedented civil as well 
as economical weal. Yet their form of government was 
vicious, unstable through absolutism, caliphs being to- 
tally unlimited despots. However, the imposing empire 
of Islam owed its fall not to despotism alone but also 
to its size and to the lassitude and factions born of its 
wealth and success.^ i Spain, then Africa, revolts, and 
we see Abbassids, Ommiads and Fatimites in deadly 
mutual war, severally pretending to the entire world-cali- 
phate. 2 Each of these dissolves into a number of still 
smaller states,^ at first vassal, then really, at last nomi- 
nally, independent. 3 Abbassid sovereignty is seized by 
the Turkish royal guard, who dispose of the throne at 
pleasure. 4 The caliph, hitherto supreme temporally 
as well as spiritually, is now forced to cede the temporal 
headship to his vizier, later called the Emir at Ovira} 
Between this and nearly contemporaneous European 
history mark several instructive parallels : The offices 
of vizier and maior domiis were similar in origin, nature, 
development and issue. In the same particulars the 



232 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

Turkish Guard of Bagdad, the African at Cordova and 
the Mamelukes ^ of Cairo resembled the praetorians of 
old Rome, the Normans and the Isaurians at Constanti- 
nople. Both Karl the Great ^ and Haroun divided their 
empires among several sons. In each case one son 
soon secured all, and in each the empire underwent the 
same process of dismemberment. 

1 E.g., Amrou introduced in Egypt direct taxation. In Spain under the 
Ommiads, Christians retained freedom of worship, their own laws and 
judges, and held councils by the authority of the caliphs. The tribute 
demanded of them was not extortionate. The Jews of Spain now fared 
far better than under the Visigoths. Abdurrahman I [755], Hescham I 
[787], Abdurrahman II [822], and Alhakem II [961] were wise rulers, 
protectors of letters and concerned for the weal of their subjects in all 
regards. Duruy, 121. 

2 Scarcely credible are the accounts of the extent to which taxes, tribute 
and booty had piled up wealth at Bagdad, for instance. The regular state 
income of the Abbassid Caliph approached ^ioo,ooo,ocx) yearly. There were 
prodigious private fortunes as well. Poets, artists, savans, the entire cul- 
ture uf the hellenized East streamed to that golden capital. There came, 
as in ancient Rome, love of ease, effeminacy, dislike for the stern life 
which had made the old Moslems irresistible. The thoughtful saw too 
that most of the wars were purely personal. Apathy resulted quickest in 
Persia, where the people had accepted Islam easiest. For 100 years 
native Arabs were the leaders and the kernel of all Moslem armies, but 
more and more mercenaries were introduced, and even slave-soldiers. 
Motassem, the eighth Abbassid caliph, dying in 842, had commanded an 
army of 70,000 Mameluke slaves. 

3 Thus in Spain the racial groups in the army of the original invasion, 
whose mutual jealousies alone gave Martell the victory at Poitiers, seem 
never to have become fully harmonized. The arrival of the Ommiad 
Abdurrahman [§ 4, notes i, 2] occasioned a fierce civil war. He soon 
secured the throne of Cordova and ruled in considerable quiet, though 
hardly a year free from rebellions. In 777 three of his chiefs appeared in 
Karl the Great's Diet at Paderborn to secure his intervention against their 
master. Abdurrahman held his own, and his son, Hescham I, took the 
offensive, crossing the Pyrenees and plundering far and wide, but making 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 233 

no permanent conquest. Even he however, and all his successors, had 
the quelling of insurrections for a constant task, which greatly lightened 
the Christian conquest [§ 16, n. 3]. On the disruption of the Abbassid 
power, see § 10, and on the whole process, Gibbon and Duruy as above. 

* 'Prince of princes.' The term vizier continued in use also. The 
sultans had their viziers. 

' These were a body-guard of Turkish slaves, who rose to power over 
their masters and became the rulers of Egypt. Their successors still held 
the land at Napoleon's arrival in 1 798. 

6 But see Ch. V, § 3, n. 2. 

§ 10 Jerusalem 

Gibbon, Ivii. Sybel, Gesch. d. erste?i Kreiizzuges, 157 sq. 

Just as the power of Bagdad was sinking, a new 
enemy of the cross appeared in the East, — the Seljuk 
Turks, for whom the Byzantines themselves had fatally 
prepared the way by ruining the Christian kingdom of 
Armenia. The Turks rapidly got possession of all 
western Asia. Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan and his son 
Malek Shah, each occupied the post of Emir al Omra, 
succeeding to the old sway of the Bagdad caliphs. ^ 
Antioch, also Jerusalem, which had been for the cen- 
tury previous subject to the Fatimites of Egypt, fell 
into Turkish hands, 1086. On the death of Malek 
Shah, 1092, his empire broke in pieces ^ and Nicaea was 
made the capital of the Turkish emirat of Roum, which 
included most of Asia Minor. Musulman soldiers en- 
camped in sight of Constantinople itself. Pilgrimage 
to the Holy Land, already an old custom, was especially 
brisk during the eleventh century.^ A single company 
numbered three thousand, another, starting in 1064, 
seven thousand. Every road to the East was thronged, 
every ship had its load of pilgrims. Christians had 



234 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

suffered somewhat under Hakem,^ but in general the 
Fatimites had treated them with mildness. Turkish 
conquest changed this. Violence was now not uncom- 
mon, churches were defiled or destroyed, tribute being 
mercilessly wrung from every pilgrim before he could 
enter Jerusalem. Many, destitute, were forced to turn 
back without seeing the holy places, some starved while 
waiting for succor. 

1 The Abbassids, that is. The caliph-office remained still, but relig- 
ious only and no longer possessing any influence. 

2 Producing the various sultanies of Iran, Kerman, Aleppo, Damascus, 
and Roum or Iconium. * Roum ' is the islamized form of the syllable ' Rom ' 
= Rome, seen now in Roumelia and Roumania, also in El Roum, the 
"Moslem name for Turkey even to-day. The office of sultan, \_— king, 
lord, or master] was of Turkish origin, being invented for Mahmud the 
Great, whose career Gibbon so interestingly recites in Hi. In io6i oc- 
curred the decisive battle of Manzikert, where the emperor Romanus 
Diogenes was defeated and made prisoner by Alp Arslan. 

3 It had begun long before looo, quickened by the expectation then 
nearly universal, of the end of the world when a thousand years from the 
Lord's advent should have elapsed. Martin in vol. iv well discusses the 
state of the church at the time of the crusades. We must remember that 
these were in the thought of the times only armed pilgrimages and not 
unlike many other movements not now connected with them. Gregory VII 
had proposed a sort of crusade, promising to lead it himself, and had 
actually assembled 50,000 men [Gregorovius IV, 71]. v. Sybel, 168 sq., 
thinks that Hildebrand intended the forcible reduction of the eastern 
church. So hardly two authors agree as to the number of the crusades. 

* The Fatimite ruler. He was not an orthodox Musulman but a pre- 
tender to revelations on his own account, as if hoping to be a second 
Mohammed. 



islam and the crusades 235 

§ 1 1 The Crusades : ^ Occasion and Meaning 

Guizot, Civilization in Europe, yiii. Milman, VII, vi. Duruy, ch. xix. Sybel, as at 
last §, 145 sqq. Kugler, chaps, i, ii. Choiseul-Daillecourt, pp. 3-36. Michelet, 
France, bk. iv, ch. iii. 

With desire for free way to Jerusalem wrought three 
other motives, producing a crusading spirit which was 
soon a frenzy, i The mihtary. Valor, always a marked 
trait of Teutonic peoples, had been evoked afresh and 
invigorated by the advent of the Normans ^ and by con- 
flicts with the Avars. Hence their incessant mutual 
wars, private and public, for which later Carolingian 
times gave such opportunity. Prospect of a campaign 
against a common foe offered tenfold inspiration to this 
martial longing. 2 The ascetic. The church consid- 
ered hard pilgrimages to saints' tombs and other sacred 
spots specially efficient means of salvation. If to the 
Holy Land they were pronounced trebly so on account 
of the extra time, toil, expense and danger. 3 The 
religious-political. The crusades are to be understood 
as the culminating phase in that long battle between 
the two would-be world-religions, Christianity and Islam. 
For four centuries Christianity had been on the defen- 
sive in Europe, under the yoke in Asia. In parts of 
Africa it had been crushed out. Even Karl the Great 
failed to keep the Ebro his boundary. The Mediterra- 
nean obeyed chiefly the Crescent, Constantinople was 
tottering, unless a great blow were now struck, Chris- 
tendom must fall prey to the neo-Musulmans. The 
sharpest immediate spurs to action were the cry of the 
eastern emperor, the inspired appeal of Pope Urban II ^ 
in 1095, at Piacenza and especially at Clermont, where 



236 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

thousands instantly responded, and the preaching of 
Peter the Hermit. The last it is true was far less in- 
fluential than usually stated, the story of Peter's journey 
to Jerusalem having been disproved by the newest 
study of the sources. Peter did not arouse Urban but 
Urban Peter.^ 

1 First Crusade, i096-'99. 
Second " ii47-'49. 
Third " ii89-'92 
Fourth " i202-'04 
Fifth " 1 228-' 29 
Sixth " 1 248-' 54. 
Seventh " 1270. 

Jerusalem taken 1099, lost 1187, regained 1229, finally lost 1244. 

2 V. Sybel, 175 sqq., makes the Normans emphatically the foremost 
representatives of the crusading interest, and gives an instructive account 
of their character and of its influence upon Europe. Cf. Ch. V, § 9, n. 3. 

3 Milman, vol. iii, 517 sqq.. Gibbon, Iviii. Adhemar of Puy, Urban's 
legate and styled by him dux belli, was the first bishop to take the cross, 
and Raymond of Toulouse the first distinguished layman. 

* So V. Sybel, 195 sqq., and Kugler, ii. Their denial of Peter's visit to 
Jerusalem according to the story universally believed till v. Sybel vi'rote, is 
based on the history of Anna Comnena, lib. x, ed. Bonn. II, 29. She 
was the daughter of the Emperor Alexius, who, doubtless in her hearing, 
had had long conferences with Peter on his arrival at Constantinople just 
before the first crusaders [see next §]. Not only is her account silent 
regarding Peter's alleged visit to and vision in Jerusalem, but it expressly 
states that although having made a pilgrimage for the purpose he had 
failed to reach that city, his way being blocked by the Turks, v. Sybel, 
188 sqq., makes it nearly certain that the exalted report of Peter's agency 
originated in a desire to glorify asceticism at the expense of papal au- 
thority. It is first published by Albert of Aix-la-Chapelle, early in the 
1 2th century, and repeated by William of Tyre about the middle of the 
same. Cf. on this, Hagenmeyer, La vie de Pierre Vermite, and de Marsy's 
criticism of Hagenmeyer's work in Pierre Vermite^ son histoire et sa 
legende. 



islam and the crusades 23/ 

§ 12 The First Crusade 

Gibbon, Iviii. Kitchin, France, vol. i, 210 sqq. Duruy, ch. xix. Tasso, Jerusalem 
Delivered. Kugler, ii, also his art. * Gottfried de Bouillon^ in Hist. Taschejibuch, 
Folge vi, 8ter Jahrg. Freitag, Bilder, I, 10. Ratuner, bk. i. Mickelet, France, 
bk. iv, chaps, iii, iv. 

The pious enthusiasm verged upon insanity. Hordes 
of old men, women and children from all Western Eu- 
rope left their homes and set out, utterly unprepared, 
for Palestine.^ Some hundreds of thousands of these, 
Peter among them, formed the van of the crusade, sub- 
sisting by robbery, especially of Jews. Not one of them 
reached his destination, though a few crossed the Helles- 
pont, to be hewn down by the Moslem sword. Of the 
crusaders proper, not less than three hundred thousand 
in number, Godfrey of Bouillon, that true warrior-saint 
who almost alone supported the dignity of the expedi- 
tion, was silently recognized as captain. A multitude 
of knights, the bravest in Europe, were with him, all 
either of Norman or of Romance stock, few Germans, 
and no king,^ having as yet taken the cross. Three 
different companies by as many different routes^ reached 
Constantinople, 1096. After long negotiations with the 
crafty Emperor Alexius, in which he induced the leaders 
to swear fealty to him, the army crossed into Roum. 
Detained a little by the siege of Nicaea and the battle 
of Dorylaeum,* 1097, and by dissensions at Tarsus,^ hor- 
ribly decimated by heat and privations upon the desert 
road, they invested Antioch. Here, successively be- 
siegers, victorious (1098) and besieged, they lost and 
suffered most severely, as much from success as from 
defeat.^ Less than fifty thousand reached Jerusalem, 
1099. This city, which had been now for three years 



238 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

again in Fatimite hands, was taken by storm, July 16, 
the Musulmans being ruthlessly slaughtered. Godfrey, 
refusing to be king, ' to wear a crown of gold where the 
King of kings had borne one of thorns,' but made De- 
fender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre, gave Palestine 
a governmental organization exactly upon the Norman 
feudal model.^ 

1 Moving in several companies, one under Peter, another under Walter 
the Penniless, a third under Emico, a fourth carrying a banner whereon a 
goose and a goat were figured, signs, perhaps, of lingering Gnostic and 
Paulician heresy [§ i6, n. 2]. These marauders evoked hostility all the 
way, taking from Christians as from Jews. At Constantinople Alexius lost 
no time in conveying the remnant of them to the Asiatic shore, where their 
bones were used by the first crusaders proper as material for fortification 
in the siege of Nicsea. Even before getting out of France, the poor dupes 
would cry, at sight of each new city upon their march, ' Is not that Jerusalem? ' 

2 Plenry IV of Germany was excommunicate and at war with his rival, 
his sons and his vassals. Philip I was excommunicated by Urban II at the 
Council of Clermont itself [Ch. V, § 16, n. 3]. Spain had its crusade at 
home. William Rufus was busy with the unsettled affairs of England. 
Godfrey was the duke of lower Lorraine, and was accompanied by his 
brothers, Eustace and Baldwin. He had fought for Henry IV [being a 
vassal of the empire] against the pope, hewing his way into Rome, but 
now wished to do penance therefor. He and his brothers commanded 
some 80,000 infantry, 10,000 horse. Other prominent leaders [Gibbon, 
Iviii] were: I Raymond of Toulouse, a warrior old and wise but haughty, 
greedy and obstinate, with a train of 100,000 men. 2 Duke Robert of 
Normandy, eldest son of the Conqueror, and like his father a stout and 
valiant fighter, who had mortgaged his lands to his brother, William Rufus, 
for money wherewith to go crusading. At Dorylaeum, by the Ifrin bridge 
in front of Antioch, and with the provision-train from the Orontes mouth 
[Cox, 61], his sword decided the victory. 3 Bohemond, son of Robert 
Guiscard, king of Naples and Sicily. He had fought Alexius already at 
Durazzo and Larissa, and probably viewed the crusade as a means to that 
victory over him which those battles had failed to yield. 4 Tancred, 
Bohemond's cousin, after Godfrey the most beautiful character of the 
crusade. 5 Stephen, count of Chartres, Blois and Troyes, learned and 
eloquent, said to have owned 365 castles. 6 Hugh, count of Vermandois, 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 239 

brother of Philip I. 7 Robert, count of Flandre. Notwithstanding 
Scott's novel bearing his name it is not certain that Count Robert of Paris 
went upon the crusade. 

3 Those from the north, under Godfrey, marched through Germany, 
Hungary and Bulgaria, Raymond through Lombardy and Dalmatia, Hugh, 
Stephen and the two Roberts, down the peninsula of Italy to Apulia, 
whence, like Bohemond and Tancred, they crossed to Epirus and traversed 
this land and Thessaly. On the numbers in this crusade, Gibbon, vol. v 
[ed. Milm.], 572. Count Baldwin's chaplain wrote that six million in all 
left the West. Incredible. There were possibly one million, including 
camp-followers. 

* Nicasa surrendered to Alexius, not to the crusaders, showing that the 
emperor had an understanding with the infidels. The battle at Dorylseum 
was on July 4, 1097. On the arms and tactics of the crusaders, Gibbon, 
Iviii, Ferrario, Romanzi di Cavalleria, 4 v. [cuts and dissertations on 
chivalry], Jahn, Kriegswesen, 'Arms and Armor' in Encyc. Brit., * Armor' 
in Am. Cyclopaedia, and cuts on pp. 29, 30, 41 and 78 of Kugler. At 
time of first crusade the square-topped helmet of the Templars with its 
door-visor opening laterally had mostly given way to a cone-shaped iron 
skull-cap, without visor [Kugler, 41]. Plate-armor for gauntlets, greaves, 
cuirass and shoulder-pieces had begun to be used over the old hauberk or 
coat of chain-and-ring mail, but some still fought in casque and hauberk 
only. By end of crusades the full casque, with its band, front, visor and 
head-piece had come in, as well as complete plate-armor. The lance was 
the standard weapon, its shaft 18 feet long and enlarged at the butt. 
Each knight carried also a sword about 30 inches in length, and a battle- 
axe with a 4 or 5 foot handle. Every knight had his esquire, mounted, 
and 4, 5 or 6 crossbow-men besides, making up the complete outfit of the 
' lance.' Contrary to some authorities, the buckler was employed in the first 
crusade, but made smaller than later. Christian armor was heavier than 
Saracen, which closely resembled it [Kugler, 78], and increased in weight 
from the earlier to the later crusades. The knight rode a palfrey till battle 
M'as imminent, then donned his gear and mounted his 'high horse.' The 
Turks rode small, nimble beasts, and outdid their enemies in rapidity of 
movement and complexity of evolutions. 

^ Baldwin and Tancred took this city, then quarrelled over it. Tancred 
retained it, Baldwin pushing east to the conquest of Edessa, where he 
founded a kingdom which stood till 1 146. From Dorylreum to Tarsus the 
army had hard work to subsist. Many horses died, knights being forced 
to go afoot. Godfrey and Raymond, ill, were carried in litters. 



240 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

^ Famine was upon them while besieging Antioch, relieved only by 
foraging expeditions and by food brought with difficulty from ships at the 
mouth of the Orontes. Several times they were nearly forced to raise the 
siege, armies being sent against them from Aleppo and elsewhere. The 
Fatimites in Jerusalem offered them peaceful entrance there, which they 
declined, bent on making it a Christian city. Having gotten possession of 
Antioch, only by stratagem, they were soon closely besieged there by Ker- 
boga, Prince of Mosul, who had been sent by the Abbassid authorities at 
Bagdad to aid the troops of Roum. Famine was now terrible. Stephen 
of Blois and many others escaped from the city and went home. Cats, 
dogs and Turks were eaten. Godfrey killed his last war-horse for food. 
At length, animated by the supposed discovery beneath a church in Antioch 
of the spear-head which had pierced the Lord's side upon the cross 
[Raumer, vol. i, 2d Beilage is on this legend] they attack Kerboga with 
success, June 28, 1098, raising the siege and opening way for advance 
upon Jerusalem at their leisure. Breakenridge, The Crusades and other 
Poems, recounts scenes at Dorylseum and Antioch. Read also Tasso, 
Jerusalem Delivered. 

7 Ch. VI, § 2. 

§ 13 The Second and Third 

Gibbon, lix. Milman, vol. iv, 250 sqq., 447. Sybel, Kl. hist. Schriften, i essay in 
each V. Kugler, v-vii. Rauvter, vol. i, 496-547, vol. ii, bk. v. Martin, France, 
vol. iv. Morrison, L. of St. Bernard. 

Edessa having been in 1146 taken from the Chris- 
tians and sacked, Saint Bernard preaches a second 
crusade. Emperor Conrad III ^ of Germany and King 
Louis VII of France march. The German and also 
much of the French army was annihilated in Asia 
Minor. Antioch was indeed reached and Damascus 
attacked, but these efforts, like all the rest of this cru- 
sade, proved wholly vain. The third crusade, occasioned 
by the fall of Acre and of Jerusalem in 11 87, was ren- 
dered famous by the participation in it of Richard Coeur 
de Lion, Philip Augustus, Frederic Barbarossa, who was 
drowned upon the way, and Saladin. Genoa, Pisa and 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 24I 

Venice aided by sea. Some success was realized : Cy- 
prus taken, also Acre, and the coast hence to Joppa 
ceded to the Christians, with the privilege of visiting 
the holy places. But Philip and Richard quarrelled, 
attacks upon Jerusalem led by the latter were twice 
repulsed, and this savage king on his return from Pal- 
estine suffered shipwreck off Aquileia, as well as long 
imprisonment 2 in Germany, from which he escaped 
only by the payment of an enormous ransom. 

1 Conrad III was uncle to Frederic Barbarossa, his successor. On 
Louis VII, cf. Ch. VI, § 17, and note 2. Many of their soldiers accused 
Christ of having deceived them and became Mohammedans. 

2 He was first arrested by Leopold of Austria, who handed him over 
to Emperor Henry VI, Barbarossa's son. This treatment is usually ex- 
plained as revenge for Richard's insult to Austria at Acre, where he is said 
to have had the Austrian banner trailed in the dirt, but is probably due 
more to his alliance with the Guelph party in Germany. The ransom 
was ;!^ioo,ooo, double the yearly revenue of the crown. It was raised by 
(i) an aid of 20s. on the knight's fee, (2) tallage on towns and on the 
king's demesne, (3) hideage and carncage, land-taxes, taking the place of 
the Danegeld, and (4) a qtiarler of all the movable property of every 
person in the realm. Stubbs, I, 501. The * Saladin tithe' had been laid 
earlier, in 11 88. It was the first tax in England upon personal property. 
The same tax was laid in France by Philip Augustus, a tenth of all the 
movables and revenues of such as did not take the cross. See Blanqui, 
n. to ch. xiv. 

§ 14 The Fourth 

Gibbon, Ix, Ixi. Milntan, IX, vii. Pears, Fall of Constantinople .' Story of 4th Crusade. 
Kugler, viii. Sismotidi, Italian Republics, II, iv. Mo7itesquieu, Grandeur and 
Declension, ch. xx'iii. Raumer, vol. iii, 41-98. 

Roused by the call of the powerful Pope Innocent III, 
a new body of crusaders sails from Venice in 1202 
under the aged Doge Dandolo. Neither king nor com- 
mon soldiers accompanying, this was even more than 



242 ISLAM AND THE CRUSA.DES 

the first, a knights' crusade. After pausing at the 
prayer of the Venetians to capture Zara, the leaders 
agreed to turn aside to reinstate the just deposed An- 
geli^ at Constantinople instead of attacking Egypt, 
their first plan. This object was accomplished, but as 
the Angeli could not fulfil their promises concerning 
money and the reunion of the eastern church with the 
western, the city was retaken, all revolt within sup- 
pressed, and a Latin empire erected, 1204. Great bar- 
barity was displayed by these crusaders, to whom is 
partly due a conflagration destroying much valuable lit- 
erature. This great 'buccaneering expedition,' really 
not a crusade at all, well reveals those base motives 
from which no one even of the genuine crusades was 
free.2 * That a Christian force, assembled for the pur- 
pose of fighting the infidels, should turn its arms against 
the most important Christian city of the time, is an act 
of unparalleled baseness, nor can anything be conceived 
more deliberately mean than the treaty by which the 
spoil of the empire was partitioned beforehand between 
the nations who took part in the attack.' ^ Venice 
received many islands and long reaches of coast, the 
Marquis of Montferrat became king of Macedonia, and 
French dukes or counts had seats at Athens, in Naxos, 
Asia Minor and Achaia. Greek kingdoms were formed 
at Trebizond and Nicaea, the latter of which, under 
Michael Palaeologus, conquered Constantinople again in 
1 26 1, putting an end to the Latin rule.^ But the city 
never recovered its old power. 

1 Isaac II, Angelus, of the Comneni family, came to the Byzantine 
throne in 1 185, but was supplanted by his brother, Alexius III, in 1195. 
Isaac II and his son, Alexius IV, besought help from the West, promising 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 243 

great rewards and the submission of their church to the pope. Constan- 
tinople once in their hands, they laid new and crushing taxes as means of 
fultilUng their contract. Revolt ensues, the upstart Murzuphlus is made 
emperor, and the Latins return, this time to remain. Great treasure was 
captured, ^4,046,000 being carried into one church for apportionment. 
The Venetians were paid |58o9,200 ferriage-money. 

^ In his letter to the count of Flanders Alexius cited as motives to go 
upon the crusade, a7nor auri et argenti et pidcJierrimarum foe/ninarutn 
vohiptas. Blanqui. 

^ Tozer, s. v. ' Greece,' in Encyc. Brit., — a very good brief history of 
the eastern empire in these times. For a fuller discussion, see the appro- 
priate chapters in Finlay, Hopf, and Hertzberg. 

^ This breaking up of the empire sealed its doom. As soon as the 
Latins were driven forth the menaces of tlie Turks began anew and never 
ceased till Constantinople fell into their hands, 1453. During the Latin 
sway in the East the Osmanli or Ottoman Turks had become the Moham- 
medan van. They came from the Chinese border, under their chief, Erto- 
grul, and entered the service of the Seljuk Sultan. The name is from 
Othman [pron. '' Osman '], Ertogrul's son and successor. Othman's son, 
Orchan, threw off the Seljuk overlordship, united most of the Turks of 
Asia Minor under his rule, and left to the emperors at Constantinople and 
Trebizond nothing but a few coast-towns. In 1356 the Ottomans seized 
Gallipolis in the Thracian Chersonesus, hi Europe, whence by sure steps 
they advanced to the Byzantine throne in less than a century. Moslem 
historians regard the Sultans of Turkey as the regular successors [* Sultans 
el Roiim '] of the long line of emperors from Constantine the Great to 
Constantine XII, who, with his capital, succumbed to Mahomet II, 1453. 
See on this. Freeman, Turks in Europe; Creasy, H. of the Ottoman 
Turks, 2 v.; Gibbon, Ixiv and the remaining chaps., esp. Ixviii; Wallace, 
Conquest of Constantinople by the Moslems. 

§ 15 The Remaining Eastern Crusades 

Mtlman, X, i, iii, XI, i. Diiruy, ch. xx. Raumer, bk. viii, i. Michelet, France, 
bk. iv, ch. viii. I\Iarii>ty vol. v. Kugler, ix-xi. 

Meantime Palestine was piteously imploring help from 
the West, seconded by Innocent, who never ceased to 
condemn the bad faith which had disgraced the last 
crusade. King Andrew II of Hungary with a large 



244 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

train went to Palestine in 12 17, but returned at once, 
accomplishing nothing. The next year John of Brienne, 
elected King of Jerusalem, proceeded to Egypt ^ and 
took Damietta. The Musulmans offered, upon cessa- 
tion of hostilities, to cede Jerusalem and all Palestine, 
but the papal legate would not treat with infidels. 
More properly named the fifth crusade is the expedition 
of the excommunicated Frederic 11,^ in which, 1229, 
he secured by negotiation what arms had long been 
attempting in vain, the possession of Jerusalem, with 
Bethlehem, Nazareth and Sidon. Frederic's ten-year 
truce with the Saracens, who were now in terror of the 
approaching Tartars ^ or Mongols, the pope denounced 
and repudiated. Jerusalem was lost again and finally 
in 1244.* The sixth and seventh crusades derive their 
sole interest from the presence of Saint Louis. The 
sixth, a large and chivalrous army, again makes Egypt 
its objective and attacks Damietta. This city was taken 
a second time in 1249, but in advancing toward Cairo, 
after terrific losses from pestilence, Louis and his entire 
host were cut off from their base and made prisoners. 
The king, ransomed at enormous cost,^ retreated to 
Palestine with 6,000 men, and after four years spent 
there, reached France in 1254. Sixteen years later the 
saintly monarch took the cross again. Persuaded by 
his selfish brother, Charles of Anjou, now King of 
Naples, to lead his army against Tunis, he there ended 
his pure life and with it the eastern crusades in 1270. 
Thus these fateful movements were terminated, as they 
were begun, by France. In 1291 Acre was stormed by 
the Mamelukes and the Christians evacuated their last 
possessions in the Holy Land. 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 245 

■ 1 Because the Egyptian Saracens were the defenders of Jerusalem. 
Hence the sixth crusade also directs its attack thither. St. Francis was in 
Egypt with de Brienne's army. He suffered himself to be taken prisoner 
that he might preach the gospel to the Mohammedans. He even appeared 
before the Sultan, who heard him with respect. 

2 Ch. V, § 19, n. 4. 

^ On the marches and conquests of these ferocious hordes, see Gibbon, 
Ixiv; for those of Timur [Tamerlane], ibid. Ixv. ' Jenghis-Khan ' was his 
title =. ' chief of chiefs ' ; his name was Temoudjin. His following was 
a mighty agglomeration of Mongol tribes, each under its khan, without 
civilization, history or close organization. Though under a domineering 
priesthood they had no deep religiousness such as the early Mohammedans 
possessed, were in fact scarcely above the level of fetish-worship. Jenghis- 
Khan, in whose campaigns five million men perished, died about 1225, 
but a son carried forward his conquests. Killing and burning, always their 
wont, they swept through Russia to Poland and Hungary. Opposed at 
Liegnitz in their advance toward Germany they defeated their foe, filling 
nine sacks with the riglit ears of the slain [Gibbon]. Dismay seized 
Europe. 'What will become of us?' asked Blanche, his mother, of St. 
Louis. The good king, not too pious or too frightened to joke, replied : 
' Why, either they will send us to heaven or we them to Tartarie^^ which 
name might mean ' hell ' or ' Chinese Tartary,' whence the Mongols had 
come. Frederic H vainly sought to rouse Europe against the invaders. 
They countermarched not because beaten, but recalled by the death of the 
Great Khan, Octai. Russia was a Mongol and an Asiatic dependency 
till about 1500, when Ivan III [1462-1505] vigorously began its consoli- 
dation as an independent power. 

* On the final fall of Jerusalem into infidel hands, Weber, Welfgesch., 

I, 753- 

" ;(^405,28o, or about ^2,026,000, according to Guizot, who follows M. 
de Wailly in supposing the 500,000 livres to be livres of Tours. The 
Sultan, Malek-Moaddam, out of admiration for Louis, reduced the sum by 
20 per cent. 

§ 16 The Crusades in the West 

Irving, Conquest of Granada. Siafiley Lane-Poole, Moors in Spain [in Story of the 
Nations Ser.]. Diiruy, ch. xxi. 

i Against the heathen Prussians, by the knights of 
the Teutonic Order.^ Successful, ii Against the Al- 



246 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

bigenses,2 Christians of South France, by Simon de 
Montfort and his men, incited by Innocent III, to en- 
force obedience to the papacy. Inquisition : thousands 
of persons barbarously put to death, civilization crushed, 
iii Against the Moors in Spain, reconquering this land 
for the cross. Out of the Spanish March, and out of 
Asturias, never Mohammedan, grew in course of time a 
long line of Christian states : Aragon, Navarre, Castile, 
Leon, extending across the entire North. The victo- 
rious enlargement southward, of these Christian king- 
doms, aided by the dismemberment^ of the Caliphate 
of Cordova, is full of interest both romantic and histori- 
cal. Periods : i Of the earliest Christian conquest, to 
914. James of Compostella the national saint. Chris- 
tians united, Leon, Burgos and other towns in the 
Douro Valley won by Asturias, henceforth the kingdom 
first of Oviedo, then of Leon. 2 Of reverse and Moor- 
ish reaction, to 998. Profiting by feuds among his foes, 
Almanzor the Victorious regains for the crescent all the 
lost territory south of the Ebro and Douro, and even 
takes Barcelona and Compostella. 3 Of consolidation 
and new advance by the Christians, to 1 1 18. The March 
and Navarre now unite with Aragon, Castile with Leon. 
Valencia, Saragossa and Toledo are won, Ommiad unity 
is forever broken, and half the peninsula already Chris- 
tian. 4 Of decisive and sweeping Christian victory, to 
1238. In spite of enormous Moorish reenforcements "^ 
from Africa: the Almoravids, 1086, the Almohads, 11 46, 
and their important successes at Valencia and a few 
other places, the Christians continued to advance. Es- 
pecially did Portugal and Aragon, the last now a mighty 
kingdom, stretching beyond the Pyrenees. From its 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 247 

total defeat at Las Navas da Tolosa, 1210, the Moorish 
power never recovers, though maintaining itself in the 
little kingdom of Granada till 1492, when it yields finally 
and entirely to Castile. 

1 On this Order, see § 18 and n. 5. The knights go to Prussia [Preus- 
sen] in 1226, and become masters there by means of hard battles between 
that date and 1283. In 1509 John Sigismund, elector of Brandenburg, 
marries Anne, daughter of the duke of Preussen, and in 1618 the two 
lands are united. After the energetic reign of Frederic William, the Great 
Elector, i640-'88, his son, Elector Frederic III, in 1701 announces him- 
self as King Frederic I of Prussia. Preussen was not however even then 
a part of the empire, the kings remaining in relation to the empire electors 
of Brandenburg as before. See Tuttle, Prussia to Accession of Frederic 
the Great, 293. Connect the present note with Ch. V, § 1 7, n. 4, Ch. XI, § 2. 

2 Read Milman, IX, viii-x, Michelet, France; bk. iv, ch. vi, vii. It was 
largely to counteract the Albigensian heresy that the Dominican and Fran- 
ciscan Preaching Orders were instituted under Innocent III. Heresies 
rather than heresy. Milman discusses (i) the simple anti-sacerdotalists, 
repudiating the rites and authority of the clergy but otherwise orthodox, 
(ii) the Waldenses, who rejected tradition and appealed to Scripture alone 
as fountain of doctrine, and (iii) the Manichaeans or Paulicians, who were 
alleged to believe in an eternal principle of evil in the manner of popular 
Zoroastrianism. The last were also ascetic in practice. 'The papacy has 
never shaken off the burden of its complicity in the remorseless carnage 
perpetrated by the crusaders in Languedoc, in the crimes and cruelties of 
Simon de Montfort. Heresy was quenched in blood, but the earth sooner 
or later gives out the terrible cry of blood for vengeance against murderers 
and oppressors.' Milman. 

3 Cf. § 9, n. 3. In accord with this is the fact that the famous Cid \^El 
6'<?zV='the lord,' 'the big man,' called in his time 'El Campeador ' or 
* the Warrior 'J who belonged to the third of the periods named in the 
text, dying in 1099, fought now on the Christian side, now on the Moorish. 
Beginning with 1028 the Ommiad dominion broke up into the little states 
of Huesca, Saragossa, Tortosa, Toledo, Badajoz, Seville, Granada, Niebla, 
Algarbia, and Mallorca. Asturias became Oviedo in 792, Leon in 917. 
Burgos, later called Castile, was first a county of Leon but became inde- 
pendent in 923. They were united again as Castile in 1230, and extended 
to include most of Navarre. Navarre on the other hand grew out of the 



248 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

March, being at first the county of Pampeluna, and named kingdom of 
Navarre about 850. Aragon began as anoLher county of the March, took 
in several other counties, then fell to the count of Barcelona. Next, as a 
kingdom, it reached far into France northward and embraced the kingdom 
of Valencia southward. Its French possessions fell away in 1258, but it 
got Sardinia in 1297, Naples in 1442. The marriage of Ferdinand and 
Isabella coupled Aragon and Castile in 1479, and the united kingdom 
drove the Moors from Granada in 1492 and secured the Spanish part of 
Navarre in 1502. Cf. Chaps. V, § 20, n. 4, VIII, § 17, and n, Portugal 
was a county of Castile, its count, Alphonso, assuming independence and 
the royal title in 11 39. ♦ 

* They were successive invasions of conquerors rather, subjecting the 
Spanish Mohammedans as well as aiding them. 

§ 17 Results of the Crusades:^ Intellectual 

AND S0CL4L 

Mibnan, VH, vi. Giiizot, Civilization in Europe, viii. Renter, Relig. Anfkl'driing 
im Mittelalter, 2 v. Kiigler, 423 sqq. Weber, Weltgesch., I, 755 sqq. Choisenl- 
Dailleconrt, sec. 4. Draper, xvi-xviii. Heereti, 321-348. Lecky, Rationalism, 
chaps. V, vi. 

While failing utterly of their original aim,^ the cru- 
sades effected tremendous and far-reaching modifica- 
tions in European civilization.^ The Albigensian and 
the Spanish unified respectively France and Spain and 
the latter founded Portugal, preparing these three king- 
doms each for its great role in later history.^ Still more 
influential by far were the eastern, involving view of 
distant lands, contact of men with men, of peoples with 
peoples, the entertainment of great ideas, and the effort, 
however vain, to realize them. They acquainted Europe 
with the institutions, conceptions, literature, art, in a 
word with the higher civilization of that new continent, 
the Byzantine and Mohammedan East.^ Marvellous in- 
tellectual quickening followed, broader notions of the 
world, general enrichment of culture. Crusading deeds 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 249 

alone furnished much new matter for historical litera- 
ture,*^ infinite new stimulus for imaginative creation of 
all kinclsJ Poetry, music, art awoke to fresh life. The 
Gothic had now its birth. The preaching orders ^ cher- 
ished letters and spread zeal therefor both directly and 
by evoking literary rivalry. Geography became a sci- 
ence. Knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, physics 
and chemistry, and of zoology and medicine in their 
various branches reached a perfection hitherto unknown 
in Europe. The crusades likewise mark an era in lan- 
guage, since they created need of better means for in- 
ternational intercourse.^ Latin was cultivated more 
industriously, Semitic study began, the tongues of Eu- 
rope were assimilated, the foundations of philology laid. 
Charitable organizations became more numerous and 
efficient, man as man was prized more highly, and the 
opening of new avenues to wealth contributed to the 
culture of all the centuries since. 

1 Choiseul-Daillecourt errs in referring too much, nearly all the ad- 
vance of the 1 2th and 13th centuries, to the agency of the crusades. 
Heeren errs equally or more in minimizing this agency. To distinguish 
with any great precision between the progress really mediated by the 
crusades and that which might have occurred without them, is obviously 
impossible. 

'^ To unite the eastern and western churches and bring the Holy Land 
under Christian government. Mohammedanism too had to give up its 
out-lying possession [Spain], as Christianity its domain in Asia. Each 
power conquered nearest home, lost its far lands. The crescent indeed 
invaded Europe again, in the conquest of Constantinople, securing a foot- 
hold from which it has not yet been driven, though it bids fair to be in no 
long time. Cf. § 7, n. 8. 

^ Heeren's essay on the Political Consequences of the Reformation 
mentions (i) the crusades, (ii) the Reformation, and (iii) the French 
Revolution as the great generic overturns in European history since the 
dissolution of Rome. 



250 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

* Spain and Portugal as discoverers and conquerors, France as leader 
in civilization. 

5 We can in part distinguish (i) influences which took effect in the 
lives and thinking of the crusaders themselves, and (ii) influences, ideas, 
arts, products, etc., which they merely conveyed to Europe. A very great 
part of all the contribution which the mediceval East made to the West 
[§ 8, cf. Ch. VIII, § 3] was realized through the crusades. The Latin 
empire at Constantinople was in this regard of great service to Europe. 

6 The dreary chronicles of monks now yield to the more edifying pages 
of Villehardouin, the Sire de Joinville, Jacques de Vitry and William of 
Tyre. No other period of equal length in the middle age presents so 
many historians as that covered by the crusades. Choiseul-Daillecourt, 182. 

"^ ' Romances not only came into greater vogue but also changed their 
subjects. The fabulous deeds in arms of the Knights of the Round Table, 
of a Roland, of a Renaud de Montauban, of King Arthur, henceforth fur- 
nished only superannuated and unattractive narrations. The languid 
amours of Tristram, of Lancelot, of Andre of France, who died from having 
loved too much the fair one whom he had never seen, gave way to more 
novel recitals upon Godfrey of Bouillon, the caliphs, the sultans, and upon 
the prodigies wrought by Egyptian and Syrian enchanters.' Ibid., 211. 
Cf. Freytag, Bilder, I, 11, Weber, I, 765-'94, Raumer, vol. vi, 473-698. 

^ And they were to a great extent products of the crusades. They 
aroused rivalry in each other, in the older orders, and in the learned not 
in orders at all. The University of Paris stoutly opposed them, sustained 
in this by the kings of France, against the popes, who were swift to dis- 
cover how valuable allies they had in these mendicant friars. Michelet, 
bk. iv, ch. ix, Lacordaire, L. of St. Dominic. 

9 Michelet speaks of Frederic II as ' one of humanity's voices by which 
Europe took up again its fraternal dialogue with Asia.' European civili- 
zation itself also now received a uniformity which it had not before 
possessed since the days of the old Roman empire. Family names, 
armorial bearings and the science of blazonry sprung up during and in 
consequence of the crusades. See Duruy, 316, Choiseul-Daillecourt, 
106 sq. These movements had evil results as well as good. Besides their 
infmite cost in blood and treasure, we may mention in particular the hatred 
toward Moor and Jew in Spain, a main factor in the decline of that land 
in civilization and influence. The enlarged power of the church [§ 18] 
was also many wise a bane. 



islam and the crusades 2$ i 

§ 1 8 Ecclesiastical 

Milman, VII, vi. Heeren, 137 sqq. Choisetd-Daillecourt, sec. 2. 

The eastern crusades exerted a decisive influence in : 
I Completing the separation between eastern and west- 
ern Christendom.^ 2 Introducing the * inquisition the- 
ory,' so long dominant, of defending and propagating 
truth.2 3 Enlarging the church's wealth by property 
of crusaders bought at low prices, or mortgaged and 
not redeemed, or alienated to the church by commenda- 
tion.^ 4 Increasing the power of the popes,* through 
the authority assumed by them and unchallenged in 
this excited period, to ' bind and loose ' in civil things 
as well as in spiritual. 5 Erecting the great Military 
Orders.^ Of these, besides several Spanish, less impor- 
tant, there were the Hospitallers, from 1048, the Tem- 
plars, from II 18, most illustrious of all, and the Teu- 
tonic, noted for its agency in the Prussian crusade. 
Formed to help defend the Holy Land, these Orders 
subsequently put forth their chief activity in Europe as 
tireless and dauntless propagandists of ecclesiasticism. 

1 Precisely the reverse of the effect intended. See § 17, n. 2. The 
formal reunion effected at the Council of Florence in 1438 amounted to 
nothing. See Gibbon, chaps. Ixvi, Ixvii. 

2 See § 16, n. 2. A recent writer cites a Spanish paper published at 
Barcelona even since 1885, which expresses a longing for the ' reestab- 
lishment of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition,' and concludes: 'What 
a day that will be for us when we see the Masons, Spiritualists, Free- 
thinkers, and anti-clericals writhe in the flames.' 

3 The precise process described at Ch. VI, § 7. See note 143 in 
Choiseul-Daillecourt. On the mortgaging, Robertson, Charles V, Int., 
Hume, England, ch. xi. 

■* Hallam, ch. vii, Milman, vol. iv, 460 sqq. Cf. Ch. V, §§ 15-20. 
E.g., the pope was allowed now as he would not have been but for the 



252 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

crusades, to absolve criminals on condition that they should go crusading. 
This liberty of his became permanent. 

5 Duruy, 318 sqq., Ploetz's Epitome, 217 sq. All the orders had priests 
and serving brothers as well as knights. The Hospitallers or Knights of 
the Hospital of St. John in Jerusalem were founded by Amalfi merchants. 
They wore a black mantle and a white cross. Their headquarters were 
transferred to Cyprus in 1 291, to Rhodes in 13 10, to Malta in 1526. The 
present Knights of Malta, with little but a nominal existence, have their 
centre at Rome. See Whitworth, H. of the Knights of Malta, 2 v. The 
Tei?iplars [Ch. VI, § 19] took their name from Solomon's temple, on 
whose site in Jerusalem the first seat of the Order was supposed to be. 
Their signs were a white mantle and a red cross. They too removed to 
Cyprus in 1291. To Philip Fair's work in their destruction succeeded the 
official dissolution of the Order by his instrument, Pope Clement V, in 
1312. See Mihiian, XII, i. The Tetdonic Order [Milman, vol. vi, 535] 
began as a German hospital-brotherhood at Jerusalem about 11 28, its 
members being created knights by Frederic of Swabia before Acre, the 
first seat of the Order, during the third crusade. Their emblems were a 
white mantle and a black cross. In 1226 a band of these knights went, 
under their Grand Master, Hermann of Salza, to Preussen [§ 16, n. i, 
Tuttle's Prussia, ch. iv, Weber, I, 757], then held by the heathen Wends, 
which they reduced to their sway by 1283. The seat of their Grand 
Master became Venice in 1291, Marienburg in 1309, Konigsberg in 1457. 
Their Prussian lands were secularized in 1525, but the knights who re- 
mained catholic kept possession of the Order's lands in the empire, with 
seat at Mergentheim in Franconia. The Order was dissolved in 1809. 

§ 19 Political 

Hallam, ch. iii, pt. i. Lecky, Rationalism, ch. v. Heeren, 164-242. Heyd, 
Levaiithaiidel. 

The crusades prolonged by well-nigh four centuries 
the life of the eastern empire, thereby withholding Italy 
and perhaps all Europe from Mohammedan conquest 
and rule. But their influence was more strikingly mani- 
fest at home, in undermining and weakening feudalism, 
to the advantage of : i The Communes, to which the 
crusades brought new consequence, (i) by necessitating 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 253 

the sale to them of new privileges by needy lords wish- 
ing to go as crusaders, (2) by rendering them, lords 
being absent, practically independent even beyond this, 
and (3) by making them rich.^ Their citizens competed 
with the church in purchasing property of crusaders, 
made enormous profits as about the sole purveyors for 
the crusades. The ascendancy of the great Italian 
emporiums, Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi, now begins. 
Commerce and business are henceforth reputable : Philip 
Augustus raises burghers to the nobility. A civic re- 
placed the chivalric spirit. The new legal study and 
intellectual life had seat in towns, which thus became 
the strongholds of the third estate.^ ii Monarchy, par- 
ticularly in France. The strengthening of the third 
estate had the like effect on monarchy. But besides 
and directly, the ' truce of God ' ^ and the entire relig- 
ious spirit of the crusades aided the king in abolishing 
private wars. Roman law greatly widened its sphere 
by the suspension of feudal courts. A more scientific 
and efficient military system came in, that of standing 
armies,* in which command fell to the king, while the 
changed proportions of infantry and cavalry called less 
for knights, more for that class of soldiers friendly to 
the king. Many great feudal families were weakened 
or annihilated. Innumerable benefices escheated to 
the king or passed by purchase and royal investiture to 
rich representatives of the third estate, wholly anti- 
feudal in sentiment. 

1 Blanqui, H. of Pol. Economy, ch. xiv, Choiseul-Daillecourt, sec. 2, 3. 
See the ordinance of Humbert II, dauphin of Viennois [Robertson, 
Charles V, Int.], promising new indemnities to the cities and boroughs on 
his domains in return for monies paid him toward his crusade. 



254 ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 

2 On all this, cf. Ch. VI, §§ 16-20. 

3 The church's sulenin inhibition of hostilities in a given locality from 
Thursday to Sunday evening each week, also during Advent and Lent and 
on certain festival days. It was introduced after the great famine of 1028- 
'30, by the bishops of Aquitaine, as a universal peace, but could not be 
maintained as such. Du Cange, s. v. ' Treuga.^ It was unknown in Ger- 
many and but locally observed in France, Spain [from 1045] and Eng- 
land [from 1080] till the crusades, when, at the Council of Clermont, 
Urban II made it obligatory generally. There were various other sorts of 
truces, differing according to the manner in .which they were sworn and 
the obligations they imposed. Choiseul-Daillecourt, n. 98. The truce of 
God aided the general peace in the same way as Philip Augustus's qua- 
rantaine-le-roy [Ch. VI, § 17]. 

* Hallam, in pt. ii of ch. ii. Teutonic military history has had three 
periods, those of (i) the old Heerbann, every landholder liable to service 
in defence of his country, (ii) the feudal militia, each vassal, if summoned, 
being bound to serve his suzerain in arms 40 days each year at his own 
cost, and no more except Iw speciiil contract for special pay, and (iii) 
hired troops and standing armies. Cf. Robertson, Charles V, Int., ii, 

§ 20 The Same 

Choiseul-Daillecotirt , sec. i. Heeren, as at last §. Roscher, Pol. Economy, I, 220 sqq. 

In these and other ways the crusades greatly dis- 
seminated and intensified the spirit of freedom. The 
entire development of towns and of the third estate was 
of course in this direction. Common hardships created 
among crusaders of different ranks a fraternal feeling. 
Even serfs on taking the cross became free,^ the breth- 
ren of their fellow-campaigners. This contributed to 
higher esteem for serfs as a class, resulting in extensive 
emancipation at home.^ Louis VII, 1137-80, ascribes 
to all men a common origin and also a ' certain natural 
liberty, only to be forfeited through crime.' In 1256, 
Bologna gave liberty to all within her walls not already 
possessing it, declaring that ^ in a free city none but the 



ISLAM AND THE CRUSADES 255 

free should dwell' Florence followed this example in 
1288, as, at about the same time, did Philip of Valois, 
'in the name of equality and natural liberty.' And 
Louis X in 131 5, * since, according to the law of nature 
all ought to be born free,' considering that his kingdom 
was called the kingdom of the Franks (free), and wish- 
ing the reality to accord with the name, ordained that 
' to all those who, by origin or antiquity, or newly, by 
marriage or by residence in places of servile condition, 
had fallen or might fall into bond of ^^xv\\m^q,, franchise 
be given! ^ 

1 Justinian's Novella 81 ordained the manumission of all slaves who, 
masters permitting, had well performed military service. No such law, so 
far as known, was made by popes in reference to serf-crusaders, their 
permission to enlist apparently resting on general consent. To serfs on 
church lands, as church property could be alienated in no ordinary man- 
ner, the crusades opened practically the sole door to liberty. 

2 Many communes had charters which guaranteed the franchise of 
fugitive serfs resident therein unless reclaimed within a certain time. Hosts 
of serfs became free thus who had left their masters on pretence of cru- 
sading. Vagabonds were no longer as heretofore presupposed to be serfs 
and held to prove the contrary. 

^ The same wave of right sentiment swept over England, where the 
machinery of representation, long known in local work, now secured ap- 
plication in national affairs. In his writ to the prelates for the first com- 
plete English parliament, 1295, Edward I says: 'As the most righteous 
law, established by the provident circumspection of the sacred princes, 
exhorts and ordains that that which touches all should be approved by all, 
it is very evident that common dangers must be met by measures concocted 
in common.' Stubbs, vol. ii, 128. The sentence italicized is from Jus- 
tinian's Code, title 56, law 5, — a proverb often met with in medii«val 
writers. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER VIII 

Renaissance : Symonds, Ren, in Italy,** 7 v. [including the 2 v. on 
the Catholic Reaction. These 7 v. best lit. in Eng. on the Ren.] ; Int. to 
Study of Dante; ' Renaissance' in Encyc. Brit, [good lit.]. Burckhardt, . 
Civilization of the Period of the Ren. in It.,** 2 v. Voigt, i Jahrh. d. 
Ilumanismus ; ** Wiederbelebung d. kl. Alterihums** 2 v, Grimm, 
Michael Angelo,** 2 v. Crowe, Tizian, 2 v. Northcote, do., 2 v. 
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Raphael,** 2 v. [cf. their Histories of Painting, 
in No. It., 2 v., in It., 3 v.]. Geiger [in Oncken], ]^en. u. Humanis- 
miis** Sismondi, Hist, de la Ren. en It., 2 v.; Lit. of the So. of Eu- 
rope, 2 V. Draper, Int'l Development of Europe. Milman, L. C, vols, 
vii and viii. Miintz, Precicrseiirs de la Ren. ; * Raphael, vie, ceuvre et 
temps ; * Ren. en It. et en Fr. a Vepoque de Charhs VIII.* Hallam, Lit. 
of Europe, 4 v, Froude [Short Studies, I], 'T. of Erasmus and Luther.' 
Reuter, Gesch. d. Aiifklarung im Mittelalter.*"^ Vice, Italia e V Europa 
dopo il secolo xv [Wks., I, ed. Ferrari]. Michelet, Hist, de France, vol. 
vii. Ronard, Ren. en Italic. Schulze, Philos. d. Ren., 2 v. Ranke, 
Samintl. Werke, vols, xxxiii, xxxiv, xl. Ziller, Italic et la Ren. Tira- 
boschi, Icttej-atura Italiana, vols, vii-x. Pater, Renaissance. Hase, 
Kirchengesch. [loth ed.]. [Geo. Eliot's Romola, Bulwer's Rienzi, 
Stein's Count Erbach, Geo. Taylor's Clytia, and Ch. Reade's Cloister 
and Hearth, are good novels to illustrate this Ch. Samson, Low & 
Co. publish brief biogg. of the great artists.] Reformation: Fisher, 
Reformation* [with lit.]. Martin, Hist, de France, vol. x. Michelet, 
do., vol. viii; Abrege on Temps modernes. Robertson, Charles V,** 
3 V, or 2. Henne, Charles- Quint, 10 v. [in 5]. Seebohm, Prot. Revo- 
lution [Ep. of H. Ser.]. Hausser, Period of the Reformation,* 2 v. or i. 
Creighton, Papacy dg. Reformation * [2 v. out, iii and iv. in pr.]. Ranke, 
Popes, 3 v.; Ref. in Germany,** 3 v.; Franzosische Gesch. in XVI u. 
XVII Jahrh., 5 v.; Hist, of the Lat. and Teutonic Na., 1494-1514 
[Bohn]. Kostlin, L. of Luther.* Michelet, do. [Bohn]. Kuhn, 
Luther, sa vie et son ceuvre,*'* 3 v. Griin, Ktdturgesch. d. XVI Jahrh. 
Schaff, Ch. History, vol. vi. Gieseler, do., vol. iv. Guizot, Civ. in Eur., 
xii. Villers, Ess. on the Sp. and Inf. of the Ref. Janssen, Gesch. d. 
dezitschen Volhes,** vols, ii, iii. Freitag, Bilder, II. [The standard ed. 
of Luther's Wks. is Knaacke's, under government supervision. Nie^ 
meyer of Halle pub. cheap edd. of the main original doc. of XVI and 
XVII cent. See also Schilling's excellent Qiiellenbuch. For. lit. on 
Luther, Bullet, of Mercantile Lib., Philad., Oct. i, 1883]. 



CHAPTER VIII 

RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 



§ I Genius of the Renaissance 

Symonds, Age of Despots, i, also last ch. Voigt, Wiederbelebungt Int. 

During the fifteenth century a change as subtle and 
indefinable as it was significant came over the spirit of 
European society. Without sharp break with the past, 
involving no strictly new creation/ no sudden or un- 
heralded revolution of ideas, gradually rose an altered 
mode of viewing man, the world, life, far less theologi- 
cal than the old, less respectful to tradition, more con- 
fident in man's powers and future, in fine, laic and 
human. 2 Renewed study of classical antiquity was sign 
and instrument rather than essence of the new move- 
ment. If men looked back, it was mostly to clear their 
vision to look and walk forward. The new thinking, if 
marked by temporary unbelief, and more given than the 
old to human and secular things, was not essentially 
irreligious, if less scholastic, not less profound. Vaster 
conceptions of the field of truth were born.^ It was felt 
that no problem had been absolutely settled, and that 
the human faculties, fettered or discouraged or else ap- 
plied to inane inquiries, had as yet scarcely given a hint 
of the productive activity possible to them.* Hence, 
fresh, courageous, successful effort to see what man 
might be, do, know. Modern history, in the narrower 



258 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

sense, now begins. ' The history of the Renaissance/ 
says Symonds, * is the history of the attainment of self- 
conscious freedom by the human spirit, manifested in 
the European races.' 

1 Even in art, in painting itself, no absolute beginning was made. 
Voigt, Wicderbelebung, I, 4, 379. The Renaissance grew necessarily out 
of existing conditions. 

2 Bezold, Hist. Zeitschr., vol. xlix, 194. A similar change followed the 
advent of Grecian culture in Asia [with Alexander] and at Rome [Voigt, 
I, 4]. Michelet's neat dictum, adopted by Symonds [Despots, 16] and 
Burckhardt, makes the Renaissance 'the discovery of the world and of 
man.' We add : ' and of their close relationship.' Theology had exalted 
man, but as candidate for another world. Humanism, in the vein of the 
cultivated Greeks and Romans, was geo-centric, glorying in the earthly- 
human. ' During the middle ages,' says Symonds, ' man had lived envel- 
oped in a cowl. He had not seen the beauty of the world, or had seen it 
only to cross himself and turn aside and tell his beads and pray. Like 
St. Bernard, travelling along the shores of the Lake Leman, and noticing 
neither the azure of the M^aters nor the luxuriance of the vines nor the 
radiance of the mountains with their robe of sun and snow, but bending a 
thought-burdened face over the neck of his mule, even like this monk, 
humanity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of sin, death 
and judgment, along the highways of the world, and had not known that 
they were sightworthy or that life is a blessing. Beauty is a snare, pleas- 
ure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only 
certainty, hell everlasting, heaven hard to win, — these were the fixed ideas 
of the ascetic, mediaeval church. The Renaissance shattered them by 
rending the thick veil which they had drawn between the mind of man 
and the outer world, and flashing the light of reality upon the darkened 
places of his own nature.' 

^ See § 13. St. Bernard, arguing against Abelard and his nominalism, 
evidently thought it the quintessence of fatuity to pretend to advance a 
new idea. 'Who are you to make an improvement in thought? Tell us, 
pray, what that truth is which has made its epiphany to you but to no one 
before. For my part I hearken to the prophets, the apostles and the 
gospel, and were an angel to come from heaven to teach us the contrary, 
anathema upon him ! ' Identifying, as so many another bigot has done, 
the truth with his own apprehension thereof. 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 259 

* How Petrarch, e.g., felt toward scholasticism, Voigt, I, 71. Michelet, 
Int. to vol. y\\, passim, expresses a still worse judgment. He calls 1200 
the saddest year in history. See, esp., notes to his §§ iii and iv. The 
13th century was the time when the All)igenses and the Waldenses were 
annihilated for their beliefs, the Inquisition set up and individuality crushed 
out. After Roger Bacon zeal in light-seeking lessened greatly. Michelet 
does not believe that writers have sufficiently noted this reaction. Hettner, 
e.g., takes 1300 as the terminus a quo of the Renaissance. 

§ 2 Its Antecedents 

Hallam, Lit., pt. i, ch. i. Burckhardt, III, i. Michelet, Int. Reuter, Relig. Auf- 
kl'drung- itn Mittelalter. Voigt, Int. 

Memory and love of classical culture, at no time ut- 
terly so, were yet during the full middle age, practically 
dead. Boethius was the last man whom they powerfully 
affected.^ The church viewed ancient art and'letters as 
hopelessly bound up with heathenism. Old manuscripts 
were lost or forgotten, the noblest works of antique art 
suffered to perish or be lost in rubbish.^ Heathen tem- 
ples were defaced or pulled down : ^ the Roman forum, 
its precious buildings levelled beneath feet of earth, 
became a cow-pasture. Latin grew corrupt, at last 
scarcely reminding of its origin. At the same time 
with this, slavish reverence for ecclesiastical authority 
was working to prevent all originality, aggression, cour- 
age in thinking.* The light kindled by Karl the Great 
and Alcuin shone neither far nor long.^ The fine intel- 
lectual life of the Hohenstaufen period, brilliant rather 
than strong, was likewise a temporary phenomenon.^ 
Study of Roman law, momentous in its way, could not 
revive .the civilization whence that law sprung. Scho- 
lasticism in the thirteenth century, with its worship and 
imperfect ^ understanding of Aristotle, had a still less 



260 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

favorable tendency. If it created mental strength, dis- 
cipline and restlessness that were seeds of rich promise, 
it buried these seeds deep. With all its profound and 
true thoughts, dogmatism, formalism, narrowness,^ ab- 
straction were its most obtrusive and influential char- 
acteristics. 

1 Not excepting Alcuin [Ch. V, § 5] or even Cassiodorus, Boethius's 
contemporary. Cassiodorus, abo.ut 480-575, and Boethius, about 470-524, 
were influential in every way, but especially in the history of education, 
because of their agency in preserving the continuity of classical paedagogics 
into that of the middle age. Boethius prepared, mainly translating them 
from the Greek, treatises on Geometry according to Euclid, Music ace. 
to the Pythagoreans, Arithmetic ace. to Nicomachus, Mechanics ace. to 
Archimedes, Astronomy ace. to Ptolemy, Grammar and Rhetoric and 
Dialectics ace. to Aristotle. He called these^ the seven liberal arts. As 
such they were made the subject of Cassiodorus's able work, de septem dis- 
ciplinis, much and usefully read in the middle ages. Weber, Weltgesch., 
516 sq. 

2 The middle age had next to no love of literature for its own sake. 
Too much credit has been given the monks for preserving the classics. 
Benvenuto d' Imola went once to Monte Casino and found there the 
rarest manuscripts lying helter-skelter in a chamber without lock or key 
or even doors. Of many the monks had cut out the finest parchment to 
make breviaries and psalters for sale. If this here, what not at Fulda, 
Cluny or St. Gall? A complete codex of Quinctilian was at St. Gall liter- 
ally unearthed from the dirt, a fuller Cicero at Lodi. When in 1816 
Niebuhr discovered in the Verona Cathedral library the precious copy of 
Caius's Institutes, the old text was everywhere bedimmed and in places 
made irrecoverable forever by being written over with epistles of St. Jerome. 
Just how or how far classical letters and interest perished in the early 
middle age no one knows. There are Mss. of some of the great Latin 
classics dating from every century in what are called the dark ages, and 
there were always a few who loved to read them. Most, however, were 
more in Jerome's state of mind, who dreamed that for reading Cicero he 
was cited to Christ's bar and scourged till he vowed never to con secular 
books again. * Mentiris^ said Christ on Jerome's calling himself a Chris- 
tian, ^Cicero7iianus es, non Christianus, ubi eniin thesaurus ttms ibi et cor 
tuum.^ 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 26l 

^ Passing from view by sheer carelessness, not unavoidably as in Pom- 
peii. Recovery is not complete even now. See Century Magazine, Feb., 
18S7. The Pantheon was nearly spoiled by conversion into a church. 
Pope Urban VIII pulled off the under covering of its portico, the most 
remarkable metallic work of antiquity, for cannon metal. There were 
450,000 lbs. of bronze. 

* The inquisitors deemed it a sufficient condemnation of Galileo that 
his views contradicted Aquinas and Aristotle [Ch. Ill, § 4, n. 4]. Not 
* herztistellen ' anything, says Schulze neatly, did the mediaeval doctors 
regard their task, but only ' darzustellen.^ 

^ Einhard, though bright [Ch. V, § 5], was but an imitator — of Sue- 
tonius, as were Widukind and Adam of Bremen of Sallust. The classical 
literature known to these and later mediaevals did not inspire them. They 
did not regret antiquity, as Petrarch did, for example. 

6 See the references at Ch. VII, § 17, n. 7. Bezold declares that 
under the Hohenstaufen German culture was in advance of Italian. Miintz 
places Frederic II [Ch. V, § 19] at the head of the precursors of the 
Renaissance. Michelet assigns this place to Joachim of Flora [§ 15]. 

"^ Mediaeval knowledge of Aristotle was long nearly all at second, third 
or fourth hand. The Arabians of Spain, Europe's earliest schoolmasters 
in his philosophy [Ueberweg, H. of Philos., § 96], used Arabic transla- 
tions of Syriac translations. Even Averroes had only a Hebrew transla- 
tion of a commentary made on the basis of an Arabic translation of a 
Syriac translation of the Greek text. Renan, Averroes et I'averroisme, 
39. Cf. § 14, 4, and note. 

^ Aquinas, prince of the schoolmen, believed in two kinds of weather, 
natural, made by God, and artificial, made by wicked men. Riehl. Cf. 
Weber, I, 730, Duruy, Moyen Age, 359 sqq., Cousin, Ess. on the Philoso- 
phie scholastique. It was very crafty, thinks Michelet, for the church to 
give men liberty of formal thought. To have forbidden all thinking 
would have dangerously stimulated thinking. Cf. § li, n. 3, 

§ 3 Its Dawn 

Sismondi, Lit. of So. Europe, chaps, ii, iii. Weber, Weltgesch., I, 89 sqq. Voigt, 
Wiederbelebung, I, 89 sqq. Renan, Averroes et Vaverrdisjne. Choiseul-Daille' 
court. Inf. des Croisades, sec. 4. Schulze, Philos. d. Renaissance, I. 

The intellectual darkness of Europe in the ninth and 
tenth centuries first broke in Arabian Spain, whither, 



262 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

with Mohammedan conquest, had pressed, as we have 
seen, the old culture of the east Mediterranean lands, 
taken up and for a time seduously fostered by Islam.^ 
Through students from the North thronging their 
schools, the Arabians, both as free investigators and as 
editors and expounders of the classics, became the 
teachers of Europe.^ A most happy outcome of the 
crusades was the quickened and enlarged intercourse of 
western with Greek and Arabian savans. The Greek 
language now began to be known,^ Aristotle learned at 
first hand. Schools and studies flourished everywhere, 
national literatures had birth. Bologna and Oxford had 
each its group of students by 1150. The Universities 
of Paris and Salamanca date from 1 200, the former often 
numbering 15,000 pupils, sometimes more. Many other 
universities were active before 1300.* Intelligence grew 
more independent as well as broader : the clergy lost 
their monopoly of learning. Abelard, 1097-1142, Al- 
bertus Magnus, 1193-1280, and Roger Bacon, 1214-94, 
were worthy prophets^ of the Renaissance, unless in- 
deed we date the Renaissance itself from their days. 
The first dared to break with the traditional, dogmatic 
realism and to assert the rights of reason. The others 
preached and introduced inductive, aposteriori scientific 
procedure in a spirit worthy of Stuart Mill. Among 
his three sources of knowledge, above authority and 
reasoning, Roger Bacon places experie7icej as the term 
of all speculation and as the queen of the sciences, 
'alone able to certify and crown their results.' 

1 Ch. VII, §§ 8, 17. Renan is of opinion that the deepest spirit of 
Islam was after all not friendly to Aristotle or to philosophy proper by 
whomsoever taught. Christian teachers too dreaded the Stagirite at first. 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 263 

Dinanto's work, 1209, the earliest visibly to employ A.'s principles in doc- 
trinal construction, was condemned, as were the physical and metaphysical 
writings of the philosopher himself. In 1231 the Univ. of Paris forbids 
reading on these subjects till further orders, in 1251 it permits a limited 
number of lectures on them, a hundred years later it proclaims Aristotle 
Christ's forerunner in natural things as John Baptist in spiritual. In thus 
dispelling the fear of Aristotle and of philosophy Aquinas was the most 
influential. His stimma or text-book, instead of being a sta?i77ia theologica 
as such had usually been named, was a sicnifua philosophica de vej-itate 
catholica. Schulze. 

2 So in De Alonarchia Dante refers familiarly as well as favorably to 
Averroes [= Ibn Raschid: about ii20-'98, i.e., nearly covering the 12th 
century] . 

^ For centuries Greek was almost unknown in the West. In Sicily and 
Calabria, e.g., in the cloisters of St. Basil at Rossano, hellenic studies 
were never laid aside, at least till late in the 13th century. Paulus Diaco- 
nus at Karl Great's court, Scotus Erigena [d. 880] and Roger Bacon could 
read Greek, but neither Gerbert, Abelard, John of Salisbury [iiio-'So], 
the most learned man of his time, nor Aquinas, the doctor angelicus. 
After Karl Great Greek apparently ceased to be in the West a regular 
branch of learning, and was known only to a few clergymen and gram- 
marians, more in Ireland than elsewhere. Nor is any writer till Richard 
de Bury, about 1350, known to have expressed regret at ignorance of this 
tongue. Till a late period but two of Aristotle's treatises were known to 
northern scholars [Ch. VI, § 8]. Abelard had no others, though Gilbertus 
Porretanus [d. 1154] knew both the Analytics, and John of Salisbury the 
whole Organon. The Arabians gave to Europe [i 250-1 300] A.'s physical 
and metaphysical books, all in their wretched, circuitous translations [§ 2, 
n. 7], First not far from 1220 Robert Grostete, 1 175-1255, bp. of Lin- 
coln, caused a translation of A. to be made directly from the Greek. Plato, 
till the very morning of the Renaissance, was less known still, represented 
only by the Timaeus in an incomplete translation, and ignored by eccle- 
siastical writers. As to Homer, Dante cites him, but like Homer's seven 
friends in Italy whom Petrarch counted up, must have read him in trans- 
lation alone. Dante praises Hebrew likewise, of course without under- 
standing it. See on all this, Hallam, Lit., pt. i, ch. ii. 

* For the universities of Italy, Tiraboschi, V, iii. The most ancient 
and illustrious besides that of Paris were Montpellier and Orleans in 
France, Oxford and Cambridge in England, Bologna [often with 10,000 
students], Naples, Padua and Rome in Italy, Salamanca in Spain, and 



264 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

Coimbra in Portugal, all founded before 1 300. The oldest in the German 
empire [Janssen, vol. i] was Prague, 1348, then Heidelberg in 1386, 
Cologne 1388 and Erfurt 1392 [both now extinct], WUrzburg 1403, Leip- 
zig 1409, Rostock 1419, Louvain 1436, Greifswald 1454, Freiburg in 
Breisgau 1456, Basel 1460, Ingolstadt [now Munich] 1472, TUbingen 
1477, Wittenberg [now Halle] 1502, Frankfort on the Oder [now Breslau], 
1506, Marburg 1527, Strassburg 1538. 

^ On these men, see Whewell, H. of Ind. Sciences, bk. xii, ch. vii, 
Milman, vol. viii, 257 sqq., Michelet, Int., Schulze, I, Weber, I, 806 sqq. 
Porphyry's Isagoge to Aristotle's Categories [called the quinque voces'], the 
chief philosophical text-book of the middle age, had already set forth the 
conflict between Plato and Aristotle upon the nature of universals or gen- 
eral ideas. Both regarded universals as realia [Realism], only to Plato 
they were ante rem, transcendent, separable from things, while Aristotle 
viewed them as only in re, the types and immanent forces of things. 
Abelard sided with Aristotle but stopped short of the extreme Nominalism 
of Roscellinus. See Ueberweg, H. of Philos., §§ 90-94. Duns Scotus and 
Wm. of Occham however recurred to the 12th century Nominalists, Roscel- 
linus, Eric of Auxerre and Raimbert of Lille, making universals to be not 
realia either ante rem or in re, but only nomina, and hence of course 
post rem. 

§ 4 Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio ^ 

Symonds, Revival of Learning, i, ii. Gibho7i, Ixx. Milman, vol. viii, 338 sqq. Tira- 
boschi, vol. vi, ch. ii. Geiger, I, i-iii. Hettner, ' Petrarch u. Boccaccio,'' Deutsche 
Rundschau, vol. ii, 1875. Sis7no7idi, Lit. of So. Europe, chaps, ix, x, xi. Burck- 
hardt. III, ii, iv, IV, iv. Voigt, bk. i. 

These three men may with much greater propriety 
be regarded as heralds of the brighter time. All re- 
ceived much inspiration from classical letters, which 
they knew and used well enough to propagate their 
enthusiasm therefor as a rich legacy to the men of the 
full Renaissance. To Boccaccio especially was due new 
interest in Greek.^ His style became a model in 
prose as did Petrarch's in poetry and prose both. Dante 
had already given fixity to Italian,^ which was thus the 
earliest among modern languages to assume a national 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 265 

character. But Dante's greatness is far more than lit- 
erary. He is philosopher, divine, historian, publicist. 
His immortal poem, the Divine Comedy,* in style as 
unique as in cohtents it is often difficult, sets forth the 
entire body of mediaeval ideas, on theology, philosophy, 
natural science, astronomy, history, politics, antiquity. 
Heaven, hell and purgatory as well as earth are here 
ransacked, and the simplest of the matters brought to 
view, made to reveal deep meanings. Here not less 
than in the poet's De Monarchia we have his political 
creed. As Beatrice, personification of purity and love, 
thus representing a spiritual church, guides through 
paradise, so Vergil, panegyrist of strong earthly empire 
and emphasizing the deserts of such as oppose this, is 
made to conduct through hell.^ Yet Dante does not 
thrust forward political or any philosophy, or theology 
even, to the lessening of poetic power. In fact litera- 
ture can boast not more than two poems comparable 
with the Divine Comedy.^ 

1 Dante lived fr. 1263-1321, Petrarch i304-'74, Boccaccio i3i3-'75- 

2 He tells us in his Genealogy of the Gods how he toiled to get Leonzio 
Pilato to settle at Florence, kept him for years in his own house, managed 
to procure classical manuscripts from Greece to read with him and at last 
saw a Greek professorship established for him in the Tuscan capital. 
Pilato [§5, n. 3] was a failure and remained but three years. Boccaccio 
and Petrarch seem to have been his only pupils and they did little. 
Petrarch kissed his Homer but could not read it. With so incompetent a 
teacher their zeal cooled instead of spreading. Not Italians but north- 
erners, like Agricola, Reuchlin, Erasmus, Budaeus and the Stephani, were 
the mighty hellenists of the Renaissance. Burckhardt, vol. ii, 272 sq. 
Ariosto knew no Greek and had to ask Bembo to name him a good Greek 
tutor for his son. 

3 What Ennius did for the Latin and Luther with his Bible for the 
High German Dante accomplished for Italian. Of the many dialects 



266 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

existing before, he fixed the Florentine as the Italian of letters. This 
momentous result was accidental. He meant, and actually begun, to write 
his poem in Latin, starting off in Vergilian style and measure : ' Ultima 
regna cano^ etc. Bembo regretted that he did not persevere. 
* The Divine Comedy, 

* This poem of the earth and air, 
This mediaeval miracle of song ' (Longfellow^, 

although taking Httle hold of Italy on first appearing [Michelet, 78, 165], 
quickly assumed a headship in literature, which it still maintains. Boc- 
caccio wrote a commentary on it, so early, and even his was not the 
earliest, but Grazio di Bologna's. 'The reading of Dante,' wrote Mr. 
Gladstone, Dec. 20, 1882, *is not only a pleasure, an effort, a lesson; it is 
a strong discipline of the heart, the intellect, the man. In the school of 
Dante I have learned a very great part of that mental provision, small as 
it may be, with which I have made the journey of human life until nearly 73 
years old. He who serves Dante serves Italy, Christianity and the world.' 
Yet all Dante's philosophy and theology are medineval, Vergil, whom he 
continually styles ' our divine poet,' cannot guide in Paradise, he says, 
' since he who has never known the law of the Lord cannot attain the 
seats of the blessed.' Avicenna and Averroes, with Horace, Lucan, and 
it would seem nearly all the famous heathen, not having been baptized, 
he leaves in limbo. Also, as de Rossi points out, neither Dante nor 
Petrarch cares aught for the art of antiquity. 

^ Inferno [canto xxxiv] has both Brutus and Cassius in hell. It puts 
no emperor there save Frederic II [canto x]. Dante lies buried at 
Ravenna, but Santa Croce in his native Florence holds a memorial tablet 
to him. 

^ The Iliad and the Paradise Lost. 



§ 5 Florence 

Symonds, Rev. of Learning, iv, v, vi. Gibbon^ Ixvi. Cap^ont, Storia delta rep. di 
Firenze. Roscoe, Lorenzo dei Medici, 2 v. Retimont, do. Villari, Savonarola 
and his Times, 2 v. Geiger, I, vi, x. 

The fifteenth century took up the spirit of the four- 
teenth, extending and intensifying it. Florence became 
intellectually what she already was politically, a second 
Athens.! By 1400 some ten thousand Florentine chil- 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 26/ 

dren could read, nearly six hundred were studying logic 
and Latin. 2 Boccaccio's influence had drawn Leonzio 
Pilato thither from Venice and created for him the first 
Italian professorship of Greek.^ Other Greek teachers 
came. Greek manuscripts were imported, learned By- 
zantines visited Florence, young Florentines went to 
study at Constantinople. The Medici* were not less 
zealous in aid of learning and culture than in business 
and their conduct of the state. With Poggio, who took 
the lead, vied Niccoli,^ Bruni, Traversari, Ficino, Valla 
and Poliziano in the discovery, interpretation and pub- 
lication of ancient writings. The neglected treasures 
of Monte Casino, Cluny, St. Gall, Fulda were brought 
to the light.^ Ancient philosophy was studied without 
theological prejudice and from the sources : how suc- 
cessfully, Raphael's School of Athens, later, shows. '^ 
Platonic Academies essayed to reconstruct Christian 
doctrine for the new age.^ From Florence this Renais- 
sance-spirit spread through Italy. At the courts of 
Naples and the Lombard tyrants as well as in the great 
republican centres, Siena, Venice, Genoa, men pored 
over the immortal classics, striving through reconstruc- 
tion of the great past to create for themselves a more 
worthy present. By Poggio and his circle, by popes like 
Nicholas V,^ Julius II and Leo X, the Holy See itself 
was brought under the same all-dominating influence. 
From Italy it passed to the rest of Europe, even Hun- 
gary and Poland. The power of mediaeval traditions 
and views of life, of mediaeval ecclesiasticism, was 
broken forever. 

1 A favorite thought with Poliziano and Poggio : * Athens not dead but 
transferred to Florence.' — Voigt, I, 372, II, 107. Cf. Hettner, as at § 4, 



268 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

p. 241. Only, as Grimm says, Athens had ten great men to Florence's 
one. Florence was the very poorest of the large Italian cities in antique 
monuments and ruins. In classical times it was an insignificant place. 
Symonds likens Venice to Sparta, as Florence to Athens. 

2 The figures are from Villani. 

3 Cf. § 4, n. I. Greek was the great innovation now, the Latin classics 
having never been quite unknown at the Italian capitals. Pilato, not a 
native Hellene, any more than Barlaamo [Voigt, II, 108 sqq.], had small 
Greek and no good Latin. He derived 'AxtAA.6us from alpha privative and 
X'-'^os, = ' the fodderless ' ! His translation of Homer was verbatim, full 
of errors and nearly useless [§ 4, n. i]. 

* Voigt, I, 295 sqq. 

5 Voigt, I, 237 sqq., 406, On costliness of books at this time, ibid., 
404 sq. Poggio was the first humanist to get and keep favor at the papal 
court, Niccoli to conceive the thought of a public library. 

6 See § 2, n. 2. The revival of learning passed through the periods 
of i) passionate imitation of antiquity, represented by Petrarch and Boc- 
caccio, ii) acquisition, libraries, gathering old Mss., regardless of their worth, 
and iii) scholarship, sifting, editing, wherein Poliziano, Ficino, Erasmus 
and such were so useful. Symonds, Despots, 24. 

"^ This great painting tells the entire story of Greek philosophy. The 
artists of the Renaissance understood old history and literature better than 
many moderns. Thus Michel Angelo's statue of David is the best com- 
mentary extant on the O. T. idea of David as a youth, — not a weakling, 
but a giant. 

8 Bezold, I/is^. Zeitschrift, vol. xlix, 2d art. It was new Platonism 
rather than old. The Grceculi esurientes as they were called, i.e., Pilato 
and those of his kind who subsequently fled westward from the face of 
the conquering Turk, are not to be credited with bringing Plato to Italy. 
Most of them did not even know Plato. Petrarch already had 16 Platonic 
writings, of which Bruni translated several. Cosmo dei Medici formed his 
Academy and trained Ficino on purpose to get Plato and Plotinus known 
in and from their own speech. On the revival of Platonism, Whewell, H. 
of Ind. Sciences, bk. xii, ch. viii. 

^ On this excellent pope, see Creighton, IV, iv, Voigt, WiederbeL, bk. 
v, Gibbon, as above, Milman, vol. viii, 121 sqq. He founded the Vatican 
Library, 1453. For the others, Symonds, Despots, 315 sqq. 



renaissance and reformation 269 

§ 6 Dark Side of the Renaissance 

Symonds, Rev. of Learning, v-viii. Voi'gt, Wiederbelebung, II, 15 sqq. 

.Naturally enough the rage for classical things some- 
times exceeded bounds. ^ Bembo, the favorite cardinal 
of Leo X, the same who used to swear ' by the immor- 
tal gods/ abhorred sermons and the Pauline letters, 
their matter and style were so bad. He believed that 
nothing new could be created in literature, that writers 
must simply imitate Cicero and Petrarch. Bembo's 
famous epitaph ^ to Raphael might for perfect latinity 
and exquisite beauty have come from Vergil, for pan- 
theistic sentiment, from Lucretius. Cardinal Bessarion 
comforted certain orphans by assuring them that their 
father ' had gone to the place of the pure, to dance the 
mystic lacchos with the gods of Olympus.' Carraro, 
protonotary of Pope Eugene IV, adapted passages of 
Horace to the purpose of Christian worship.^ An ora- 
tion before the University of Ingoldstadt, 1502, calls 
Plato second Moses, physician of the soul, the inspirer 
of all highest moral striving, and ranges Zoroaster, 
Linus, Orpheus, Empedocles, Parmenides and other 
heathen celebrities on a level with Moses, David and 
the prophets. Conservatives were led to denounce 
Plato, Averroes and Alexander of Aphrodisia* as the 
three pests of Italy. Some humanists in high places 
not only forgot but transgressed Christian law. Popes 
lived like Nero and cursed by Jupiter and Venus. In 
inner rooms of the Lateran, papal secretaries who had 
spent the day in deciphering inscriptions or glossing 
manuscripts, devoted nights to carousing and plays of 
filthy wit, touching pope, church and the most sacred, 



270 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

as well as all manner of worldly things. They named 
their club the ^ biigialc,' or 'smithy of lies.' Such was 
the midnight pastime of that apostolic circle from whose 
pens solemn bulls and breves would next morning issue.^ 

1 Pedants delighted in addressing municipal counsellors as patres con- 
scripli, calling every saint a divus or a deus, nuns vu'gines vestales, cardi- 
nals senatores, their dean princeps senalus, excommunications dirae, the 
carnival Lupercalia, etc. The soldiers of the French army in 15 12 were 
said to be otnnilnis diris ad infernos devocati. — Burckhardt, I, 353. 
Petrarch set more by his Latin poetry than by his sonnets and canzoni, 
and Aiiosto was urged by some to write in Latin. Bembo evidently 
thought Latin destined to be to all time the sole language of literary con- 
verse. 

2 Over Raphael's tomb in the Pantheon. It reads : 

Ille hie est Raphael tivitiit quo sospite vinci 
Rerum magna parens et moriente mori. 

^ He availed himself among others of Ode xii, Book I, turning gentis 
htimance pater atque custos, into gentis humance pater et redemptor. 'On 
his death-bed Cosmo de Medici is attended by Ficino, who assures him of 
another life on the authority of Socrates, and teaches resignation in the 
words of Plato, Zenocrates and other Athenian sages.' Milman. Pletho, 
during the Council of Florence, i438-'42, avowed to George of Trebizond 
his conviction that men were upon the point of renouncing both gospel 
and Koran for some form of heathen religion. 

* One of the most famous of the commentators on Aristotle, his views 
of his master, however, tinged with New-Platonism. 

^ Poggio relates it all himself, and he was the ring-leader. Voigt, II, 
15 sqq. It was the age of flippancy in both speech and writing. 'Bur- 
lesque' is from the name of a Florentine barber, Domenico Burchiello 
[d. 1448], who composed funnily satirical sonnets. 

§ 7 Renaissance Literature 

Symonds, IV, V, Italian Literature. Weber, II, 140 sqq. ' Machiavelli and his Times,' 
Westm. Rev., Jan., 1879. Sismondi, Lit. of So. Europe, chaps, xii-xv. 

The Italian literature of the Renaissance proper, rich 
as it is in quantity and variety, is not in quality what 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 2^1 

the prodigious intellectual life of the time and the .in- 
spiration awakened by so large acquaintance with the 
classics would lead us to expect. Only a few of its 
products can criticism declare great. Among these 
Guicciardini's History of Italy ^ may perhaps be placed, 
and certainly Machiavelli's writings, whatever opinion 
we may have of their ethics. The meaning of his 
* Prince,' is not that such a ruler is intrinsically desira- 
ble, but, in the then condition of Italy, necessary to 
solid national government, a judgment apparently true, 
assuredly sad. The names of Boiardo, Ariosto and 
Tasso^ have passed into the literary history of the 
world. The Orlando Inamorato and the Orlando Fiiri- 
oso re-work, only in a far richer way than had yet been 
done, the old sagas touching Karl the Great's famous 
Paladin, Roland. The former poem is the more serious 
and moral, the latter the more flippant, imaginative 
and finely expressed. Tasso with his Jerusalem Deliv- 
ered, in which the first crusade is handled as the Trojan 
war is by Homer and Vergil, falls far behind Ariosto, 
whom he strove to excel. The small bulk of Italy's 
truly worthy literature in this period is due to a moral 
lack. It was Epicurean, not Stoic, antiquity which 
the Italian humanists raised from the dead. Authors 
were chiefly courtiers, and of a most sycophantic type. 
Ariosto glorifies Lucrezia Borgia;^ Machiavelli, Caesar. 
Tasso, twice insulted and imprisoned by his patron, the 
Duke of Ferrara, whines to be restored to favor. Not 
strange that the seer to divine and declare the real sig- 
nificance of the Renaissance movement, was no Renais- 
sance poet or literator but an artist.* In the Stanza 
delta segnatura of the Vatican, in his magnificent paint- 



2/2 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

ings, the 'Dispute,' * Parnassus,' * School of Athens' 
and 'Delivery of the Laws,' Raphael voiced the most 
characteristic message of the Renaissance to man, that 
Revelation, Philosophy, Culture and Law, Church and 
State, each divine in its way, are qrdained of God to 
exist together in harmony.^ 

1 Translated, in lo v. Cf. Symonds, Despots, iv. For Machiavelli, 
ibid., iv, V, and Sismondi, ch. xv. Cf. Bohn's tr., or Detmold's ed. of M.'s 
historical, pol. and diplomatic works, Boston, 1882. Machiavelli says that 
it is not necessary a prince should be merciful, loyal, humane, religious, 
just, that if he had all these qualities and always displayed them they 
would harm him. But he must seem to have them, especially if he be 
new in his principality. It will be as useful to him to keep the path of 
rectitude when this is not inconvenient as to know how to deviate from 
it when circumstances dictate. A prudent prince cannot and ought not to 
keep his word except when he can do it without injury to himself. Prince, 
ch. xviii. The devil's appellation of Old Nick he is said to have gotten 
from Machiavelli [Nicholas], in view of sentiments like the above. For 
the basis of our interpretation, see Prince, ch. xxvi. 

2 On these three writers, Tiraboschi, XII, iii, Hallam, Lit. of Europe, 
pt. ii, chaps, v, vii, Symonds, vol. v, chaps, i, ix, Sismondi, as above. 
Ariosto's perfection is limpidity of style, the result of toil. He spent ten 
years in writing his poem and sixteen in polishing. The autograph copy 
at Ferrara shows page after page of alterations [Symonds]. He is always 
equal to his best. Yet both he and Boiardo have some obscurities, and 
some passages against church and clergy, which house-chaplains in pious 
families used to paste over, — to make the children, Weber says, more 
anxious to read them. The Inamorato and the Furioso are parts of the 
same story, — a very old story already [on the Roland-cycle, Weber, 
§§421, 428, 429]. Roland, whom previous writers had set forth as pas- 
sionless and above frailty, Boiardo makes fall in love with Angelica, an 
infidel coquette come from Asia to sow discord among Christians ; Ariosto 
goes on to represent the fair one as deserting Roland for Medoro, a young 
squire, and Roland crazed with jealousy thereat. Symonds's chaps, vii 
and viii in Catholic Reaction relate to Tasso. 

3 Calling her *a second Lucrece, brighter for her virtues than the star 
of regal Rome.' Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, apologizes for this famous 
woman with some show of success, exhibiting her as weak rather than bad. 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 2/3 

Grimm, however, M. Angelo, I, 171, thinks G.'s effort fatuous. The Borgia 
name and family were Spanish [Borja]. Csesar is openly the hero of 
Machiavelli's Prince. Petrarch showed little moral strength, — archdeacon 
in the church and ceaselessly excoriating the clergy for vices, yet himself 
not always chaste, devoting over 300 sonnets and the best 20 years of his 
life to moping over an unrequited love. ^ Ed io son un di quel che il 
pianger giova,^ he wrote. Boccaccio was at a still lower level, vulgar and 
sensual. 

* Hettner. The Dispute exalts theology, as the School of Athens does 
philosophy, the Parnassus music, poetry and all culture, and the Delivery 
of the Laws [civil and canon], justice. In the room the Dispute and the 
School of Athens face each other. So do the remaining two, culture and 
justice. * Room of Signature ' because here the pope signed solemn offi- 
cial papers. 

^ Yet Pinturicchio and Perugino thought it no shame to work for 
princes like the Baglioni and popes like Alexander VI [§ 14]. Da Vinci 
was engineer for Caesar Borgia, musician and painter to the corrupt Mila- 
nese court under the Sforzas; and that gentle spirit, Alberti, devoted his 
architectural genius to the beautifying of Malatesta's palace at Rimini. 



§ 8 Art 

Reber, Mediaeval Art [Harper, 1887]. Scott, Renaissance of Art. 
Symonds, Fine Arts, i. 

Renaissance art varies from that which it supplanted, 
by its infinitely greater beauty, exuberance, variety and 
naturalness. Traditional subjects and the old stiff 
modes of treatment no longer give law. Motion enters 
the domain of art-representation. The beauty of saints 
and angels is made to heighten the expression of their 
holiness. Artists no longer neglect or degrade the hu- 
man body as a mere unworthy tenement of the spirit, 
but study and delineate it as noble in itself. Graceful 
postures and movements, and lovely landscapes are intro- 
troduced. The world and man assume a strange air of 
joyousness. In fine, art casts quite aside its old ascetic 



274 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

and pessimistic spirit. Artists now astonish not only 
by their numbers, but also by both their range and their 
profundity of genius. Giotto, Angelo and Raphael ^ were 
each masters of the three great arts, Angelo poet and 
engineer besides. Da Vinci's genius was more univer- 
sal still. In point here is the fact that painting, totally 
lacking that classical stimulus so helpful to architecture 
and sculpture, was now the field of the most copious 
production. But in all art, besides new cycles of sacred 
subjects, mythical, classical and profane-historical ones 
are introduced, the old themes handled in a free way, 
subjected to limitless variations. Draperies are com- 
posed, actions and expressions suited to subjects and to 
moments. Apostles, prophets, saints are now portrayed 
as actual human beings. Madonna and child, with Joseph 
and the little John, image real domestic experience. 
The sacred blends with the natural, heaven comes down 
to earth. In these ways the love of beauty and the 
interests of our present life are brought to mingle with 
the devotion inspired by the art, which thus acts to 
deliver from narrow and distorted religiousness. Much 
of the new architecture and sculpture, especially An- 
gelo's, was characterized by a strength and grandeur 
never before attained. 

1 Pater's book has a chapter on his poetry, also one on da Vinci. The 
latter was a universal genius, equally great in arts and sciences, in paint- 
ing, sculpture, poetry, music, botany, anatomy, mathematics, mechanics, 
and engineering. 'The discoveries which made Galileo, Kepler, Maestlin 
Maurolycus, Castelli and other names equally illustrious, the system of 
Copernicus, the very theories of recent geologers, are anticipated by da 
Vinci.' — Hallam. He depicts horses as natural as Rubens's, far more 
lifelike and modern than those of Rnphael, who follows the antique. 
Giotto, like Lysippus of old, was a goldsmith before he became a sculptor, 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 2/5 

and Lorenzo Ghiberti worked in the precious metals at the bench of his 
step-father, Bartoluccio, ere he carried off the prize for the paradise-doors 
of San Giovanni from geniuses of the dignity of Brunelleschi and Dona- 
tello. Raphael modelled little, but perfectly, as the Jonah of the Chigi 
Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo, which Gsellfels thinks he chiselled as well. 
He designed the Chapel itself, with several other buildings, and was head- 
architect to St. Peter's between Bramante and Angelo. He was least at 
home in architecture. See Mlintz's Raphael. MUntz is director of the 
Bibliotheqiie iiiternational de Part, which contains the best books extant 
on the origins of art, as well as much else on mediaeval culture. See at 
end of his Precurseurs. 



§ 9 Architecture and Sculpture 

Milman, XIV, viii, ix. Fergnsson, Modern Architecture. Symonds, Fine Arts, ii-viii. 
Michelet, Int., § x and note. Weber, II, 27 sqq. 'Architecture,' in Encyc. Brit. 

Architecture was the first art to defy tradition, an 
effect partly accounted for in that : i Innovations in 
it were little liable to the charge of heterodoxy. 2 To 
the large number of ancient buildings already known in 
Italy, new were now added by excavations, and all ren- 
dered more influential by study. 3 No architectural 
style had here become strict law. The Byzantine pre- 
vailed in South Italy, the Gothic only in the North, 
neither in Rome,^ where a Romanesque fashion had un- 
consciously continued. The Baptistery in Florence, 
finished by 1300, gives fore-gleams of the Renaissance, 
especially in its 'paradise-doors.' The Cathedral there, 
with its immense horizontal spaces, strives away from 
the Gothic,^ which Giotto's tower retains only in its 
ornament. Renaissance architecture proper owes the 
most to Brunelleschi's initiative, who boldly introduced 
vaulting^ in the Florence Cathedral, and gave the flat 
basilica'* ceiling to the nave of San Lorenzo. The laws 



2^6 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

of Vitruvius ^ were now generally introduced, palaces 
completely romanized, churches brought back more to 
that pattern which, save transept and dome or tower, 
had been borrowed from the Roman basilica and is still 
dominant in the churches of Western Christendom. 
Of this new mode of building, the centre was Rome, 
where Bramante^ begun, Angelo completed, its most 
splendid representative, St. Peter's. Contemporane- 
ously with Angelo wrought Palladio, mainly in Venice, 
Verona and Genoa, famous still for palaces wherewith 
his skill adorned them. In sculpture as well as in archi- 
tecture, Michel Angelo is the greatest name, his David, 
Moses and Night equalling, if they do not surpass, the 
most splendid of antique statues. 

1 The Gothic came from France to Italy. Santa Maria sopra Minerva, 
begun in 128c, is the only Gothic church in Rome, and what critics regard 
the purest Gothic exists nowhere in Italy. The home of this species of 
architecture was north of the Alps. 

2 Whose peculiarity is vertical lines and an upward tendency, toward 
heaven : this taking effect not in the points, turrets and acute arches 
alone, but every wise. Michelet is no friend of the Gothic, thinking it 
unscientific, cheap, ever needing repairs. — Int., § x. 

^ This and arching constituting the main features of the Romanesque. 
On the competition between Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, first about the 
Baptistery-doors, then upon finishing the Cathedral, Grimm, M. Angelo, 
I, 6, Michelet, Int., § x. Michel Angelo, being asked where he wished 
to be buried, replied, 'Where I can eternally contemplate the work of 
Brunelleschi.' Michelet adores Brunelleschi and deems this dome of his 
finer than Angelo's on St. Peter's. Wren outdid both in his dome of St. 
Paul's, London. 

* The basilica was the Roman court-house. It was oblong, with nave 
\jestudo\ and aisles, nave being separated from aisles by rows, sometimes 
double rows, of pillars. These justice-halls naturally served as models for 
churches and imparted to these their name. The tribunal or judge's place, 
opposite the door, became the apse, holding the bishop's throne, separated 
from the nave by the fence of open work, which retained its old name, 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 2// 

cancelli. The altar of Apollo just behind the cancelli gave way to the 
communion table. See 'Church,' in Smith's Die. of Christian Antiqq. 

^ A military engineer of the time of Augustus. He left a work on 
Architecture, mostly from Greek sources. 

'^ Tiraboschi, IX, vii. 

§ ID Painting 

Mt'lmatt, XIV, ix. Grimm, M. Angelo, ch. xii. Symofids, Cath. Reaction, ch. xiii. 

The new Italian painting soared highest, unquestion- 
ably outdoing the Greek. Cimabue,^ who astonished the 
world by painting a Madonna as a real and beautiful 
woman, led in point of time, his pupil Giotto, Ruskin's 
idol, coming next. Massaccio,^ another mighty pre- 
Raphaelite, advanced not a little upon his predecessors 
in mastery of light, shade, color and drapery. He made 
subjects live, breathe, speak. For delineating spiritual 
beauty Fra Angelico is unequalled. Michel Angelo's 
great paintings^ in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican, 
awful in conception, miracles of execution, are among 
the chief glories of art creation. But Raphael is the 
foremost painter of all the ages, his Sistine Madonna 
standing in unapproachable excellence upon the topmost 
pinnacle of art. He is as prolific as he is consummate, 
yet in neither respect so wonderful as in his restless 
effort toward an ever-advancing ideal. Tizian, Paolo 
Veronese, Lionardo da Vinci and Coreggio, contem- 
porary with the two preceding, were artists, any one of 
whom would have appeared a miracle to a less brilliant 
age. If the seventeenth century betrays some decline 
in strength, originality and morality, Guido Reni and 
Carlo Dolci at least keep on high the sense of beauty, 
Dolci's Corsini Madonna being in this quite without a 
rival. 



278 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

1 Cimabue 1240-1302, Giotto 1276-1337, Massaccio 1401-28, da Vinci 
1452-15 19, Fra Angelico 1474-1563, Michel Angelo 1475-1564, Tizian 
1477-1576, Raphael 1483-1520, Correggio 1494-1534, Paul of Verona 
i528-'88, Guide Reni 1575-1642, Carlo Dolci i6i6-'86. 

2 To both Massaccio in his frescoes in the Carmine, Florence, and 
Cimabue in his so human Madonna of S. Maria Novella, the problem is 
to represent saintliness without giving to the figure the cold and stiff ap- 
pearance characteristic of the Byzantine style. Each solves it, but M. 
much better than C. 

3 'Michel, piu che vioi'tale, angel divino'' [Ariosto], said he was no 
painter and painted under protest. His painting is not confined to the 
Sistine Chapel. He has a Conversion of Paul and a Crucifixion of Peter 
in the Paolina Chapel of the Vatican. He also painted the Madonna 
under the Cross for Vittoria Colonna, and, in his early years, — his only 
easel picture, — the Holy Family in the Tribuna of the Uffizi, Florence. 
The Last Judgment, Sistine Chapel, is his most lauded work with the 
brush. Ruskin says that, other things equal, it requires higher art to paint 
a large than a small picture. 



§ II The Renaissance European 

Sytnonds, Despots, i. Hallam, Lit.,pt. i, ch. ii. Voigt, Wiederbelebung,\vi\.. Tira- 
bosclii, V, iii, VII, iv. Ruge [in Oncken], Zeitalter d. Entdeckttngen. Prowe, 
Nicol'diis Copernictis. 

Not surprising that Italy saw the dawn of the new 
age and, in some respects, its fullest day. Italy was the 
chief heir of the classical world, ^ the chief centre of 
mediaeval civilization. It was also the earliest land to 
acquire wealth, that indispensable prerequisite to leisure 
for thought and study. Here too feudalism was feeble,^ 
liberty first had birth. Here almost alone in the middle 
age was liberty enjoyed. Lastly the whole mediaeval 
history of Italy, so stormy and changeful, was calculated 
to nurse individuality, inventiveness, daring. It thus 
became possible for Italy to bear the brunt of the 
Renaissance struggle, doing in this a work without 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 2/9 

which no subsequent progress could have been made. 
Yet the Renaissance was not confined to Italy. It was 
European. All Western humanity now started up to 
put away childish things. Thought, renouncing pre- 
scription and mere formal work,^ was set free for effort 
in a hundred new directions. The telescope, already 
known to the Arabs, Roger Bacon described to Europe 
in 1250. The compass was brought to light in 1302, 
linen paper and gunpowder about 1320. Printing 
triumphs in 1438, and in less than a century Vergil, 
Homer, Aristotle and Plato appear in noble editions. 
America is discovered in 1492, the Cape rounded in 
1497. Copernicus* explains the solar system in 1507, 
proves the revolution of the earth in 1530. Savonarola 
closes the fifteenth century, Luther opens the sixteenth, 
which, going out, leaves behind Boehme, Bacon, Grotius, 
Hobbes and Descartes.^ In this same period feudalism 
gave way and absolute monarchy rose in France, Spain, 
England, Austria and Turkey.^ Equally mistaken is it 
to derive the Renaissance causally from any external 
event, as the fall of Constantinople and the consequent 
hegira of Greek scholars <" to Italy, although several of 
the above-named effects unquestionably became causes 
in time. Thus, printing incalculably spread and stimu- 
lated intelligence, and the influence of Columbus and 
Copernicus reached philosophy and theology. God and 
his universe were seen to be greater than men had 
dreamed. The time-honored, ever-ready explanations 
of things no longer sufficed. Far-reaching questions 
pressed for answer. One could ask whether man, 
whether this world, were really the centre of the divine 
plan. 



280 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

1 Voigt notices that Italy not only bridged the way from classical to 
ecclesiastical Rome, but also led in the reverse movement from ecclesiasti- 
cism to antiquity. In Italy paganism in fact never died. 

2 Ch. VI, § 14. 

^ Formal work, the mind exerting its powers on premises already given 
by revelation, merely deducing and unfolding the contents thereof [formal 
logic], instead of discovering actually new truth [real logic]. Mental 
hunger began after the truth itself, cognition of realities objectively and in 
se, as distinct from mere subjective and external apprehension. Cf. § 13. 

* Vernacular name Koppernigk. He was a Pole, born at Thorn, in 
Prussia, 1473, and died in 1543. See Prowe, as above. 

^ On these philosophers we must refer to Ueberweg and the other 
Histories of Philosophy. Symonds's ch. ix, in Catholic Reaction, is on 
Giordano Bruno. He lived 1550-1600. 

6 For the significance of this, Ch. IV, § 16. Merging the state in the 
king and the church in the pope ushered in the last age of feudalism, and 
formed the prelude to that drama of liberty wherein Renaissance was the 
first act. Reformation the second and Revolution the third, and which we 
nations of the present are still evolving in establishing the democratic idea. 
— Symonds, Despots, 9. 

"^ Their advent of course had its effect, but it was relatively slight. The 
Greek comers were mainly unlearned men. The state of Greek letters at 
Constantinople, 1400-1500, is even now very imperfectly known. Greek 
was certainly cultivated there, and old Greek manuscripts vi'ere as plentiful 
there as old Latin ones in and near Rome. Classical Greek had not be- 
come a dead language. The stability of the court and of schools aided 
literature. Monks, clergy, schoolmasters and isolated savans preserved 
precious old writings, as in the West. Xenophon, Strabo, Plutarch and 
Arrian were continually copied and read. Chrysolaras, George of Trebi- 
zond, Theodore of Gaza, Bessarion and Laskaris were critical scholars and 
had some peers, but not many. — Voigt, II, 102 sqq. 



§ 12 The Renaissance beyond Italy 

Geiger, bk. ii. Hallam, Lit., pt. i. L'ubke, Renaissance in Dentschland. Bezold, 
' Conrad Celtis', Hist. Zeitschr., 1883. Weber, II, 21 sqq. Janssen, vol. ii, bk. i. 

The Renaissance assumed consequence beyond the 
Alps only toward the end of the fifteenth century.^ 



RENAISSANCE AND RRFORMATION 28 1 

France felt Italy soonest and most. Italian artists ^ 
and literators visited that land, Charles VIII's soldiers 
carried home the spirit of the country they overran.^ 
The sixteenth century produced several French artists 
of high rank,* none, however, reaching the perfection of 
the Dutch painters, the brothers van Eyck, in the pre- 
ceding. Hans Holbein the Younger was the first non- 
Italian to do this, his Darmstadt^ Madonna belonging 
among the very small number of consummate master- 
pieces. The works of Durer,^ Rubens, Rembrandt and 
van Dyck still delight all beholders. In Germany and 
in the North generally, the inspiration begotten of the 
Renaissance tended more to study, thought and reform 
than to art. Universities were founded and filled, clubs 
of humanists formed, breadth of view cultivated, an 
astounding mass of learning acquired. Reuchlin,'' Eras- 
mus, von Hutten and Melancthon were foremost in 
these activities, and to them in more than one respect, 
the modern world owes an immeasurable debt. They 
fought obscurants, discovered and verified manuscripts, 
corrected texts, made commentaries. Erasmus was the 
first modern to edit the Greek New Testament : there 
is scarcely a prominent Greek or Latin classic which 
Melancthon did not expound. 

1 There were no literary products of value north of the Alps in the 
15th century save those of Commines and Sir John Fortescue. 

2 Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto and Benvenuto Cellini each 
spent some time at Francis I's court. Laskaris went from Florence to 
Paris, helped to form the royal library of Fontainebleau and to introduce 
Greek into the University of Paris. 

^ On this monarch's Italian expedition, Symonds, Despots, ch. ix. It 
was from i493-'98, he taking Naples in 1495, but holding it only a few 
months. 



282 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

* Goujon and Pilon have been called the fathers of French sculpture. 
The former was killed in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. 

° Subject and treatment are the same as those of his Madonna in the 
Dresden Gallery, but critics regard the Darmstadt exemplar the older. 

*^ Grimm, * Albrecht DUrer ' in his vol. of translated essays, and Zahn, 
Dilrer's KtmstleJu'e u. sein V^ei-h'dltniss zur Ren., Leipzig, 1866. 

■^ Geiger, bk. ii, has a ch. [v] on Universities; vi is on Learned Socie- 
ties, ix on ReuchHn, x on Erasmus, xi on von Hutten. Hettner makes 
Hans Sachs the greatest humanist of them all. On editing Mss., Symonds, 
Despots, 245 sqq. Machiavelli was contemporary with Luther. Reuchlin 
lived 1455-1522, Erasmus 1467-1536, Luther Nov. 10, 1483-Feb. 18, 1546, 
V. Hutten 1488-1523, Melancthon 1497-1560. 

§ 13 The New Ideas 

Draper, ch. xx. Kohler, ' Staatslehre d. Re/ortnatoren,' in Jahrh. 
/. deiitsche TheoL, 1874. 

The depth of this great movement should be appre- 
ciated as well as its breadth. Leading tendencies which 
marked it, slow and irregular in asserting themselves, 
may be indicated as follows : i A better thought ^ came 
to prevail of God, as not fickle or vindictive but rational, 
law-loving and benign. Men's consciences became 
freer, worship more spiritual, religious devotion less a 
slavish service, less a thing of form and ceremony. 
2 Life was viewed more as something besides probation, 
as having legitimate interests of its own. This world 
too, men felt, was meant to be enjoyed. Man was looked 
on less as a merely religious being, as simply an instru- 
ment for God's glory in the old sense, and religion more 
as a personal instead of a collective concern. In gene- 
ral, individualism 2 replaced the mediaeval spirit, so 
dominant before, of ecclesiasticism, of class, guild, fra- 
ternity. 3 Lar2:er belief in the prevalence of law and 
order in the universe, along with the discovered falsity 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 283 

of many old beliefs, brought the entire scholastic method 
of truth-seeking into disrepute, and substituted for it 
the more rational and fruitful one of observation, experi- 
ment, induction. An age of criticism came, wherein 
thought refused to limit itself to formal^ exercise or to 
allow its field to be prescribed. The content of truth, 
revealed or other, had to be examined. Theology began 
perforce to be scientific. 

1 Largely due to the new study of Platonism, which, from the middle 
of the 15th century, supplanted that of the Aristotelian philosophy. Pico 
of Mirandola denounces A. as foe to Christianity and exalts Plato as its 
saviour. Pletho was main source of this change. At last in the 1 6th 
century Peter Ramus could begin a dissertation before the University of 
Paris by declaring every proposition in Aristotle false, and Nicolaus Tau- 
rellus, counterpole of Aquinas, could call Aristotle and reason contradic- 
tory opposites. 

2 Not at all an accident that the captain of the Reformation, Luther, 
was a Nominalist instead of a Realist. Cf. § 3, n. 5. 

' §u,n. 3. 

§ 14 Condition of the Church 

Milman, bk. xiii. Symonds, Despots, vi-viii; Catholic Reaction, vi, vii. Ranke, 
Popes, bk. i, ch. ii. yanssen, vol. ii. Creighton, vol. i. Klupfely ' Schw'dbische 
Bmtd,' Hist. Taschenbtich, 1881. 

Amid such ideas and currents of feeling it was im- 
possible that the church should be reverenced and 
valued as before. Various special causes aided the 
depreciation of her, turning it in many quarters into 
contempt and hatred. i The great schism ^ of the 
West, 1 378-141 7, two rival popes, seven years of the 
time three, with credentials of apparently equal validity, 
thundering excommunications at each other. 2 Dissi- 
dence of view during and after the Councils of Pisa, 
1409, and Constance, 1414-18, on the question^ whether 



284 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

or not pope was superior to council. 3 The Inquisi- 
tion,^ organized by Innocent III and extensively used 
against the Albigenses, but always unpopular with the 
masses, especially in Germany. 4 The discovery that 
Aquinas had many wise misinterpreted * Aristotle, also 
the prevalence of Averroistic views on several important 
questions, notably that of immortality.^ 5 The chill 
which zeal for the positive^ element in Christianity 
received from the ardent study of the classics. 6 The 
contrast of the poverty of even the royal laity with the 
wealth of ecclesiastical institutions and the exorbitant 
demands on their behalf urged by greedy and assuming 
churchmen. 7 Most serious of all, the moral corrup- 
tion ^ in ecclesiastical circles, especially in Italy. Popes 
practiced open concubinage and simony, and in govern- 
ing the church, purely in their own interest, made free 
use of poison and the dagger. Prelates who had paid 
high for places were butchered that these might be sold 
again. The worst was under Alexander VI ^ : his court 
was a den of fiends, embracing an assassin-in-chief, a 
professional poison-mixer, a numerous harem. The 
moral gangrene spread to monasteries, nunneries, laic 
life. Bastards were too common to bear stigma, the 
words 'honor' and 'virtue' lost their old meanings, 
morality sunk to a level lower than Epicurean. 

1 Milman, as above, presents tlie causes. It was a quarrel between the 
Italian and the Ultramontane, mainly French, faction of the church. 
Against Urban VI, Italian, who was elected Ap. i8, 1378, Clement VII, a 
German, was elected on the 20th of the next Sept. Urban died Oct. 15, 
1389, and Boniface IX was instantly chosen in his stead. Clement VII 
died Sept. 16, 1394, Benedict XIII being elected at Avignon the 28th of 
same month, in his stead. Boniface IV died Oct. I, 1404, Innocent VII 
became his successor the 12th. Innocent died Nov. 6, 1406, succeeded on 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 285 

Nov. 30th, same year, by Gregory XII. Both Gregory XII and Benedict 
XIII lose obedience and are deposed by the Council of Pisa, June 5, 1409, 
when, June 26, Alexander V is elected, followed, on his death, by John 
XXIII, elected May 25, 14 10. Gregory and Benedict refusing to abdi- 
cate, there are now three popes, until Oddo Colonna is elected Martin V 
by the Council of Constance, Nov. 11, 141 7. On all this, Creighton, bk, i, 
Gibbon, Ixx. 

2 The catholic doctrine, unquestionably so since the Vatican Council, 
1870, is of course that pope is superior. On this account Pisa is not reck- 
oned as a Council of the church, it not having been convened by a pope. 

2 Ch. VII, § 16, Cf. Symonds, Despots, 333 sqq., Weber, I, 737. The 
first agent of the Inquisition in Germany was put to death, and several 
others later, 

* Roger Bacon reproached Aquinas and Albert the Great with teaching 
Aristotle as boys, without knowing him. Duns Scotus called Aristotle as 
taught, nothing but an ' aristotelizing Thomas.' This conviction grew, and 
led to the sundering of theology from philosophy, the latter henceforth 
only ancillary. Modern criticism confirms these opinions, proving that his 
medieval expositors ascribed to A. opinions of Arabian glossators and 
other Peripatetics, and grossly falsified him to make him orthodox. Miche- 
let, 49, Lange, H. of Materialism, bk. i, sec. ii. Thus Albert the Great, 
Aquinas and Duns Scotus agree in referring to Aristotle a conception of 
cause which he never entertained. 

^ Averroes had denied personal immortality, at least in the usual sense, 
maintaining that only mind or spirit in general would survive bodily death. 
He believed this tenet Aristotelian. 

^ ' Positive ' as opposed to ' moral ' : the positive behests of Christianity 
being those, as observance of Sunday and of the sacraments, which natural 
reason would never indicate. 

''' The saints of the North found at Rome all the commandments turned 
into the one : * Geld her ! ' — Hase. Boiardo [a churchman] wrote : — 

' 'Tis said by some that by and by the good 
Pope and his prelates will reform their ways. 
I tell you that a turnip has no blood, 
Nor sick folk health, nor can you hope to raise 
Syrup from vinegar to sauce your food. 
The church will be reformed when summer days 
Come without gadflies; when a butcher's store 
Has neither bones nor dogs about the door.' 

See Symonds, Appendix to vol. ii of Lit. See ibid., for Lutheran senti- 
ments of Italian poets in Leo X's age. 



286 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

^ ' Pope Alexander VI [Borgia] played during his whole life a game of 
deception. Never did a person so often break his word or pay less regard 
to his engagements.' — Machiavelli, Prince, ch. xviii, Caesar often did his 
father's and his own assassin-work. He would go about Rome in the night 
with a squad of ruffians, and next morning a half-dozen bodies of murdered 
men would attest their diligence. His device was aut Ccesar aut nihil. 
For such as the Borgias did not dare or care to take off in this way they 
had a white, pleasant-tasting powder to poison withal, killing gradually. 
The father died, and the son almost, from accidentally drinking wine 
which they had drugged with this powder for use in removing a cardinal. 
Michelet, 214, also chaps, vi, vii. On Lucrezia Borgia, § 7, n. 3. Beside 
Gregrovius's work apologizing for her, see an apology for the whole 
family : Les proces des Borgia, which the Rev. kistorigue, Mai-Juin, 1883, 
calls good for nothing. ' Vertii'' had come to mean merely 'ability,' espe- 
cially 'cunning,' and ^ onore,^ 'repute,' as in the Vxmzo., passi77i. See 
Symonds, Despots, ch. on Machiavelli. There is awful satire in the 
Decameron, First Day, Second Novel, about the Jew Abraham, converted 
to Christianity through a visit to Rome. He reasoned that a religion able 
to live in spite of such utter godlessness in its highest places must be of 
God. Cf. Symonds, Despots, 424 sqq., Grimm, M. A., ch. ii. From 
Michelet, Int. [vol. vii], citing Rigaud, the 13th century seems to have 
been in France as bad as the 15th. 



§ 15 Reformers before the Reformation 

Ullmamt. Reformers before the Reformation. Gillett, L. and Times of Huss, 2 v. 
Jortin, Erasmus. Drtinimond, do. Madden, Savonarola, 2 v. jfedart, Jean 
de Gerson. 

While these disorders were for the most part not 
caused by the Renaissance, which they long antedated, 
it called fresh attention to them, rendering more serious 
an opposition^ to the church, or to its administration, 
which had been wanting in no age. This opposition 
was partly practical, insisting on reform of morals with- 
out attacking the frame of the church, and criticising 
ecclesiastical powers only so far as they withstood this, 
and partly theoretical, aimed at the very constitution of 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 28/ 

the church. The theoretical critics were of very various 
stripes, from pure independents to such as merely wished 
to subject the pope to new guaranties of fidelity to duty. 
Doctrine save as involved in polity did not enter into 
these controversies, even the most licentious popes 
being scrupulously orthodox.^ To the first of the above 
classes belongs Savonarola of Florence, whose difficulty 
with the church was complicated by politics,^ and in the 
main, Hus of Bohemia, burned at Constance. To the 
second : i The Albigenses and Waldenses, objects of 
crusade and Inquisition,^ and to counteract whose influ- 
ence the^reat preaching orders, the Dominicans and 
Franciscans, had been organized. 2 Abbot Joachim of 
Flora,^ with his ' Eternal Gospel,' which proclaimed in 
essence a new, churchless dispensation, of spiritual men, 
free through the Holy Ghost, even from the law of 
Christ. 3 John Wyclif,^ the first English reformer, 
who declared the papacy to be the poison of the church, 
the pope, however good personally, Antichrist by virtue 
of his claim to rule the universal church. 4 A large 
party of devoted churchmen strongly represented at the 
Councils of Pisa^ and Constance, who opposed papal 
absolutism and wished to subject the pope entirely to 
the authority of general councils. 

1 It is thus impossible to understand the Reformation save as offspring 
and phase of the Renaissance. See Geffcken, in Church and State. But 
best is Rossmann, Betrachtungen ilber d. Zeitalter d. Ref. [has important 
Beilagen]. Janssen in like manner deduces the Reformation from what 
was before. 

2 Except possibly Leo X, who was charged with averroism [§ 14, n. 5] 
upon the doctrine of immortality. 

^ See auth. at § 5. Also Grimm, M. A., ch. iii, Michelet, ch. v, 
Symonds, Despots, ch. viii, and Appendix A. to Machiavelli's Prince. 



288 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

Savonarola was the inflexible foe of the Medici's misrule, which he greatly 
helped to end, and after Lorenzo's death, Piero's deposition and the de- 
parture of Charles VIII, he was for a time lawgiver to the city. But the 
combined opposition of Pope Alexander VI, the Medici faction in Flor- 
ence and the despots of other cities at last overwhelmed him. On Hus, 
Mihnan, XIII, viii, ix, Creighton, bk. ii, chaps, iv, v. 

4 Ch. VII, § i6, n. 2; Milman, IX, viii. 

^ Michelet, Int., 72; Renan, Joachim de Flore, in Rev. des deux 
Mondes, 1866; MUller, Joachim von Floris, in Herzog-Phtt's Realencyc. 
Joachim's evangel proclaimed a new freedom, to be introduced by the 
Holy Ghost, which should set free from the law of Christ, as Christ had 
set free from that of Moses. He spoke of the Spirit, the inner light, in 
much the manner of the early modern Friends. John of Parma said to 
the Cordeliers : Doctrina Joachimi excellit doctrinam Christi. 

6 Milman, XIII, vi. 

' On these Councils, Creighton, I, vi, vii, II. Ill is on the Council of 
Basel. 

§ 16 Germany : Religious State 

Ja^issen, vols, i, ii. Ullmann, as at § 15. Hase, ch. vi. 

Germany was the land where for special reasons this 
spirit of ecclesiastical rebellion was strongest. Real 
piety and morality had here their chief seat. The 
Bible was common and in the vernacular,^ preaching 
likewise, much of which was evangelical and earnest. 
The work of Tauler ^ and of the Friends of God had 
taken lasting effect. John WesseP had proclaimed up 
and down the Rhine valley nearly the same doctrines 
which Luther was about to advocate with such success. 
Von Wesel and von Goch had been influential in the same 
direction. Italian vice was near enough to be known, 
not familiar enough to be popular. The spirit and 
beliefs of Hus* had lived on, nourished by the memory 
of his holy life, of his brave and unjust death. With all 
this was joined that Teutonic individualism ^ and love of 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 289 

independence, which, partly good, partly evil, have made 
Germany even to our day, a theatre of political disorder. 
It is noticeable that the sixteenth century found feudal- 
ism powerful in Germany alone.^ Once, mostly loyal 
to the emperor, the Germans had abhorred the pope as 
his foe, and this feeling still existed. Now princes, 
striving for sovereignty^ of their own, hated Rome as 
having become the empire's natural mate and helper. 
This animus infected the people and large numbers of 
the clergy. 

1 There were 17 German translations of the Bible [not merely edi- 
tions] before Luther's: 14 High German, 3 Low. Surgant's Manuale 
Curatorum, 1506, warns preachers to distinguish before their hearers be- 
tween the sense and the letter of scripture, because the people, women as 
well as men, have the Bible in their own tongue and will read the portions 
for the day before coming to church. It is no fiction or hyperbole when 
Sebastian Brant begins his Narrensckiff, 1494 [ed, Zarncke] : — 

* All land syntjetz voll heiliger gschrifti 
Und was der selen heil a7itrifft, 
Bt'bel, der heiligen V'dter ler, 
Und ander der gleichefi Bucher mery 
In mass das ich ser ivicjider hab 
Das Nyemant dessert sick darab.* 

The editor of the Cologne Bible, i470-'8o, presupposing that the learned 
will still use the Latin scriptures, exhorts that all Christians read the new 
translation, attending to the sense thereof. The Lubeck Bible, 1494, con- 
tains the same injunction. Proofs of this kind exist in abundance. Yet 
Luther expressly says : * When I was 20 years old I had never yet seen a 
Bible and supposed there were no other gospels and epistles than those in 
the postils.' In explanation it has been noticed that Luther was brought 
up in a very rude part of Germany, Mansfeld in Thiiringen, even Leipzig 
being named in 1497 ^ barbara tellus. But before ending his 20th year 
he had been a year at Magdeburg and taken his Bachelor's degree at 
Erfurt. If it is true that he had then never seen a Bible it must have 
been his own fault. See Janssen, vol. ii, 67 sq., cf. vol. i [12th ed.], 54. 

2 John Tauler, 1290-1361, a mighty mystic perfectionist and preacher, 
to whose mode of viewing Christianity Luther was greatly indebted. He 



290 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

did not defy or break with the church, yet minimized its office. On the 
Friends of God, Mihnan, vol. viii, 399. They too were mystics, more ultra 
than Tauler was at first, but under the influence of their leader, Nicholas of 
Basle, he joined them. The Friends were still in existence in Luther's 
day, * if not organized yet maintaining visibly if not publicly their succession 
of apostolic hoUness.' 

^ Hase, § 264. Wessel [d. 1489] proclaimed true religion independent 
of church forms, forgiveness by God alone, scripture, ' God's abbreviated 
word,' as sole source of faith. Goch laid stress on saving faith as neces- 
sarily issuing in good works. Wesel emphasized predestination and made 
light of papal power. He was imprisoned [1479] and forced to recant, 
dying in prison, 1481. Luther taught very little if aught in which these 
men and their numerous fellow-believers all over Germany had not antici- 
pated him. Wesel had been professor in Erfurt, Luther's own alma mater. 

4 See § 15, n. 3. Hase, §§ 262 sq. ^ ch. VI, § 13. 

s Ch. VI, § 3 and n. i. "^ Bryce, xvii, xviii. 



§ 17 Political State 

Symonds, Catholic Reaction, ch. i. Robertson, Charles V, bks. 1, ii. Ranke, Ref. in 
Germany, bk. i; Popes, bk. i, ch. iii. Geiger, II, ii. Janssen, vol. i, bk. iv, vol. 
ii,esp. 3i3-'i6. Ullmaim, Kaiser Maxhnilian I. Mignet,Rivalite de Franqois I 
et de Charles F, 2 v. Putter, German Empire, bk. iv. 

Germany began the sixteenth century in extreme 
pohtical distraction. Victory there of feudal aristocracy 
over central power, the precise reverse of contemporary 
development in France, had left the emperor the mere 
head of a loose confederation, with very slight actual 
power. The Fiirsten, hereditary and practically sover- 
eign, were seeking to subdue the cities and all nobles 
within their territories, holding of the emperor. So 
great the anarchy, the Diet^ of 1495 ordained toward 
the reform and greater efficiency of the empire (i) a 
general tax for its legitimate needs, (2) universal and 
perpetual end to wars between the states, aggrieved 
rulers to recur to (3) the imperial chamber ^ or supreme 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 29I 

court of the empire, never popular with emperors be- 
cause its members were appointed by the estates. To 
balance it the aulic council, created in 1501 as an Aus- 
trian affair, gradually assumed imperial functions. In 
1500 the empire was divided into six administrative 
circles, made ten in 15 12, a Fiirst, with army, in charge 
of each, to insure the execution of laws. The empire's 
foreign relations were still more troubled, commanding 
Maximilian's and Charles's constant attention, i Turk- 
ish wars^ threatened Austria chiefly and directly but 
involved the whole empire, ii Partly imperial, partly 
Austrian interests led Maximilian into costly leagues,* 
(i) to drive Charles VIII from Naples, 1495, (2) that of 
Cambray, 1 508, to strip Venice of her main-land posses- 
sions, and (3) 'the Holy,' so called, 15 11, to expel the 
French from Milan and all Italy, iii Disastrous to the 
empire was the enmity to the Hapsburgs because of 
their immense hereditary sway : ^ Austria, Burgundy, 
the Netherlands, Spain, Naples and Sicily, America, 
to all which Ferdinand's marriage added Bohemia and 
Hungary. France, surrounded, must have been Haps- 
burg's foe, even had Charles not been elected emperor 
over Francis I, his rival. 

1 The first Diet under Maximilian I [1493-15 19]. His predecessor, 
Frederic III [i440-'93], had resisted these innovations as imperilling im- 
perial power. Maximilian, 'the Penniless,' yielded, hoping to realize from 
the new tax, called the ' common penny.' 

^ With president, appointed by emperor, and adsessores, by the diet. 
The diet consisted of the electors, the other Fiirsten, and the delegates of 
the free cities. The chamber would thus certainly be against the emperor 
on any question between him and diet or Fiirsten. The seat of the 
chamber [till 1693: afterwards always Wetzlar] was Spires, and the slow- 
ness of its proceedings, unmatched even in England's chancery, led to the 
proverb : SpU'ae lites spirant et non exspirant. 



292 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

^ After taking Constantinople the Turks continued to advance toward 
the heart of Europe till 1683, when they were forced to retire from Vienna. 
At this date Ottoman power encompassed the entire Black. Sea. 

* He was aUied in (l) with Venice, Pope Alexander VI, Milan and 
Ferdinand of Aragon, his aim to check French power; in (2) with Pope 
Julius II [1503-13], Louis XII of F'rance, who was Maximilian's vassal 
for the Milan duchy, and Ferdinand : motive, to punish Venice for alli- 
ance with Turks and take back the cities it had wrested from Romagna; 
in (3) with Julius, Venice, Ferdinand, Henry VIII of England, and the 
Swiss : motive, to carry out Julius II's notion that * the barbarians must be 
banished from Italy.' 



5 Maximilian Mary 

of Austria, of 
Lmperor 1493-1519. Burgundy. 


Ferdinand 

of 

Aragon. 


Isabella 

of 
Castile. 

1 


Philip Fair 

of Austria. 

1 




1 
Joanna. 

_ 1 


1 


1 

Charles (I of Spain) V, 

Emperor isig-'sS. 




Ferdinand I, 
Emperor i5s8-'64. 



Charles V inherited the Austi'ian crozun lands and the Netherlands from 
his father, United Spain, with Naples, Sicily, and America from his 
maternal grandfather. To the empire he came of course by election. Of 
Austria he committed first the administration, then the possession, to his 
brother Ferdinand, who also succeeded him in the empire. Austria had 
acquired this great power by marriage, of Maximilian I with Mary of Bur- 
gundy, of their son with Joanna, and of Ferdinand. Hence the lines : — 



Bella gerant alii, iufelix Austria nube, 
Namgue Mars aliis dat tibi regna Venus, 



§ 18 Spread of the Reformation ^ 

Janssen, vol. iii, bk. i. Weber, ii, 39 sqq. Grun, as in bibliog. Ranke, 
Ref. in Germany, bk. i, iii. 

Luther had at first no thought of breaking with the 
church but was drawn to the step gradually, by force of 
circumstances rather than of set purpose. A year after 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 293 

arraigning Tetzel he appeals ^ to the pope, holds an 
equally docile attitude in conference with Miltitz in 
15 19, reverently addresses Leo again in 15 19 and 1520, 
seems not averse to peace even at the colloquy of 
Regensburg ^ so late as 1541. The Augsburg Confes- 
sion disclaimed all purpose of framing a new church. 
But his outcry against Tetzel's shameless^ traffic had 
voiced a popular feeling stronger than he thought, and 
after his bold stand at Worms he found himself at the 
head of a movement for which times were ripe, bearing 
him on in spite of himself. The intelligence and moral 
earnestness which speedily sided with him, soon com- 
manded the people. Before the Reformation was half 
a century old, notwithstanding its foes and its excesses, 
the Peasants' War^ and the Miinster anarchy, fully 
ninety per cent, of the Germans had embraced it. 
Meantime a more radical revolt against Latin Chris- 
tianity had been spreading in Switzerland, led by 
Zwingli.^ Checked for a time by his death, this south- 
ern protestantism assumed double vigor under Calvin. 
From Geneva, its centre, went forth zealous preachers 
in all directions, fearless of death, bent on the salvation 
of souls. Besides French Switzerland, Holland and 
Scotland were won for Calvinism, England and France 
almost. 

1 1483, Luther born. 
1508, Professor at Wittenberg. 

15 1 7, Theses against Tetzel. 

15 18, Zwingli begins in Zurich. 

1520, June 15, Luther excommunicated, by the bull exsurge domine. 

1521, Diet of Worms, Luther under imperial ban, to Wartburg, 

begins tr. of Bible. 
i524-'5, Peasants' War. 
1525, League of Dessau, Catholic P^iirsten. 



294 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

1526, I Diet of Spires, liberty bat no propagandism : League of 
Torgau, Lutheran FUistcn. 

1529, II Diet of Spires, Edict of Worms to be rigorously executed: 

Lutherans /r(^?/^j-/, hence 'Protestants.' 

1530, Diet of Augsburg: Melancthon presents Augsburg Confession, 

without effect; new opinions to be suppressed. 

1 53 1, League of Smalcald, Protestant Fursten and cities. 

1532, Peace of Nurnberg : Augsburg decree r&scinded: Protestants 

to have liberty till Council. 
i534-'5, Anarchy in Miinster. 
1536, Calvin begins at Geneva. 
i545-'63, Council of Trent. 

1546, Luther dies, Feb. 18. 
1 546-' 7, Smalcaldic War. 

1547, Battle of Milhlberg: Wittenberg taken by Charles V. 

1552, Maurice joins Protestants, being already in league with 

Flenry II : Treaty of Passau, Protestants free till next Diet. 

1553, Battle of Sievershausen : Maurice beats Albert of Brandenburg- 

Culmbach but is mortally wounded. 
1555, Peace of Augsburg. 

2 Janssen, vol. ii, 71 sqq. Luther was at Rome in 15 10. Whatever 
his impressions then it was long before he thought of deserting the church. 
March 3, 15 19, he protests to the pope before God and all creatures that 
he has never intended to attack the Roman church. In Feb., same year, 
he averred that no cause, no sort of sin or evil therein, was or could be 
so important as to justify one in leaving the church. In the Leipzig dis- 
putation of this year he admitted that the Hussites had done wrong in 
separating from the church. In 1520 he M^rites: ' To Leo the Tenth, the 
all-holiest in God the Father, Pope at Rome, all blessedness in Christ 
Jesus,' stating that he wishes well both to Leo and to the Roman Chair, 
and prays for both 'with all his powers.' Yet he had expressed to Spala- 
tin, March 13, 1519, his uncertainty whether the pope was Antichrist or 
Antichrist's apostle, and in the letter of 1520 he appeals to Leo if it is 
' not true that nothing exists under the wide heaven more ugly, poisonous 
or hateful than the Roman court. For it far surpasses the vice of the 
Turks, insomuch that although Rome was once a gate of heaven it is now 
a much wider opened mouth of hell, such a mouth, alas, through God's 
wrath, that no one can shut it.' He expects Leo's thanks for this plain- 
ness of speech, and will recant nothing. 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 295 

3 Where the emperor and Contarini, papal legate, met Bucer and 
Melancthon half-way. But the protestant FUrsten enjoyed freedom and 
did not propose to gird on again their old bonds to church and empire. 

^ According to Luther, Tetzel preached: I 'That the red cross on the 
indulgences, with the pope's seal, was just as powerful as the cross of 
Christ. 2 That he, Tetzel, had grace and power as great as St. Peter 
would have if present. 3 That in heaven he would not take second place 
to Peter, for he with his indulgences had saved more souls than Peter by 
preaching. 4 That just as soon as a piece of money put into the chest for 
a soul in purgatory touched and jingled on the bottom the soul escaped to 
heaven. 5 That the grace of indulgence was precisely the grace through 
which man is reconciled to God. 6 That it was not necessary to have 
penitence or pain or do penance for the sin if one purchased the indul- 
gence.' From Tetzel's explanation of indulgences later, Janssen doubts 
his preaching thus, but Myconius confirms Luther. 

^ This rising of the oppressed and starving poor to wrest their rights 
from the nobles was, of course, only occasioned by Luther's revolt, but his 
enemies charged him with causing it. To clear himself he became the 
most merciless opponent of the Peasants' movement. He was also held 
responsible for the wild views and plans of the MUnster fanatics, who, 
though holding much valuable truth, proposed to suppress not only the 
papal system but all temporal rule, setting up forthwith the kingdom of 
God on earth. 

^ On Zwingli and Calvin, Janssen, vol. iii, bks. i, v; Freemantle, Church 
and Democracy at Geneva, Contemp. Rev., Aug., 1882; Coligny and 
Failure of Fr. Reformation [in New Plut. Ser.]. Under Catherine del 
Medici France was on the point of going over to Protestantism, nobility 
and merchant classes especially. Margaret of Valois, Francis I's sister, 
was a Huguenot. See Green, England, vol. ii, ^-^"j. 



§ 19 Political Intervention and Settlement 

Ranke, Ref. in Germany, bks. i, vi. Janssen, vol. iii, bk. ii. Robertson, Charles V, 
bks. ix, X. Heeren, Pol. Conseqq. of the Reformation. 

Much as the Reformation owes to Luther, one of his- 
tory's greatest figures and forces, he was voice to it 
rather than cause, and by his narrowness ^ and indiscre- 
tion even did not a little to hinder it. But his breach 



296 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

with the humanists was a help, rendering the movement 
popular at the same time that it had solid intellectual 
basis in himself and Melancthon. The half aristocratic 
character of the Reformation in France, where it allied 
itself with descendants of the old feudal aristocrats, was 
the chief source of its failure there. The Reformation 
found decisive support in the political world, without 
which it must have failed or been indefinitely delayed. 
This proceeded from : i All tendencies in the empire 
hostile to either it or the church. 2 All princes or 
nobles dissatisfied for any reason with either. 3 The 
interregnum before the election of Charles V, which 
made vicar Frederic the Wise,^ Luther's firmest sup- 
porter. 4 Charles's character as a foreigner, ^ the same 
consideration as to Ferdinand causing his election *King 
of the Romans,' to multiply the protestant princes. 
5 French and Turkish* attacks. 6 Direct alliance and 
aid of the French kings Francis I and Henry II, who, 
while burning protestants at home, succored them be- 
yond the Rhine. Once at peace with his foreign foes, 
Charles, consummate captain,^ found no difficulty in 
overrunning Germany in the Smalcaldic war, but the 
treason ^ of Maurice of Saxony speedily restored victory 
to the protestant side, and irrevocably sundered church 
as well as empire into two confessions. By the Peace 
of Augsburg, 1555, in spite of the pope's opposition, 
this division took legal form. Princes and free cities 
that held the Augsburg Confession were to have equal 
imperial rights with catholic estates. No other form 
of protestantism was recognized. The ins 7'eforinandi' 
might be everywhere exercised : cuius regio, eius religio, 
but dissenters were free to emigrate. 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 297 

1 He and Zwingli held a disputation at Marburg on the nature of the 
Lord's supper [§ 20, n. i]. Luther insisted on taking the words 'this is 
my body ' literally, in catholic fashion ; Zwingli interpreted them sym- 
bolically : * this means my body.' Despite their disagreement Zwingli 
held out the hand of fellowship. Luther refused it, saying, ' Ye are of a 
different spirit.' Yet Bucer induced the Zwinglian cities to join the Smal- 
caldic League. Janssen is not over-severe in accusing Luther of too easily 
identifying his view with God's truth, though Luther often enough pro- 
fesses fallibility. The humanists, Erasmus, Reuchlin, Albrecht DUrer, 
at first encouraged Luther, but could not go the length of rupturing the 
world's ecclesiastical unity. Not strange. They foresaw the ' Caesaro- 
papismus ' [Ch. IX, § 4] to which the reform movement must lead, and 
deemed religion safer in an ecumenical church under an elective head 
than in so many national churches each under an irresponsible head. 
Men who argued so Luther regarded God's enemies. 

2 The pope, fearing the power Charles would have if elected, secretly 
favored Francis, and did his best to bring Frederic to his view as likely to 
hold the balance of power among the electors. This was Miltitz's mis- 
sion [§ 18], and explains his kindly attitude toward Luther. In M.'s 
conference with Luther he admits the shameless abuse of indulgences, 
which Janssen now seeks to cover, and promises that it shall be stopped. 

^ The same has kept Hapsburg rulers unpopular in Germany ever 
since, and cultivated the hatred against Austria as a non-German land 
which led to the war of 1866. See v. Treitschke, Deutsche Gesch. if?i 
XIX Jahrh. I, 4 sq. 

* Yet the army to beat back Solyman the Magnificent in 1531 was 
made up partly of protestants, and Luther himself gave it a good send-off 
in a fiery sermon against the Turks. Francis I formed alliance with Soly- 
man to aid against Charles. Reviled therefor, he replied, ' When wolves 
attack my sheep, I shall employ dogs to defend them.' 

5 Equally consummate in the cabinet, — one of history's great men. 
Nor was he by any means the catholic bigot most protestants suppose. 
On the contrary catholics accused him of favoring and even patronizing 
heretics. Green, England, II, 204 sqq. Cf. Weber, II, 33. As they stood 
above Luther's grave in Wittenberg the duke of Alva was for pulling up 
and burning the corpse. * I war not with the dead but with the living,' 
said the emperor. He attacks the League of Cognac, though headed by 
Pope Clement VII, Francis, Venice, Sforza of Milan and Henry VIII its 
other members, and his army under the Constable de Bourbon, who had 
deserted Francis for Charles, takes Rome and imprisons the pope. Many 



298 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

protestants were in this army also. Hostilities were ended by the Ladies' 
Peace of Cambray, 1529 [Charles's aunt, Margaret of Austria, and Fran- 
cis's mother, Louise of Savoy]. 

^ He had aided the emperor in the campaign against the protestants 
and in return had been installed elector of Saxony in John Frederic's 
place. But no sooner has Miihlberg made Charles master of Germany 
than Maurice turns against the emperor, allies himself with Henry H of 
France and becomes head champion of the protestant cause. 

7 Freedom of faith after all only for Fursten, and of these for none but 
Lutherans. Every Fiirst could force his subjects to conform to his faith 
or leave his land. Lutherans were little less hostile to Calvinists [Re- 
formed] than catholics were. A stone built into a house in Wittenberg 
bears the legend from Reformation times : 

' Gottes Wort, Littheri Schrift, 
Des Papstes und Calvini Gift.' 

As little did Calvinists or Calvin himself concede to others the freedom of 
belief which all protestants demanded from the pope. The Genevan 
leader approved the burning of Servetus, as ' a pious and memorable ex- 
ample for all posterity.' On the indefiniteness of the Augsburg Treaty 
and the consequent misunderstandings, leading to the 30 Years' War, see 
opening §§ of next Chapter. 



§ 20 Ecclesiastical Settlement 

IVeder, II, $2 sqq. Ha^-euiac/t,!!. of Doctrine, lYth Period, Schaff, 
and Giesele-r, as in bibliog. 

I Doctrine. The protestants proposed to take script- 
ure alone as authority, casting aside tradition, patristic 
opinion and conciliar decrees. The Lutherans wished 
to reject only the scripturally forbidden, Calvinists 
everything which scripture does not command. Liv- 
ing faith was proclaimed to be the only soul-saving act, 
works valueless except as springing from this. Both 
wings, though Calvinists with far the more stress, 
referred faith for origin, in Augustine's manner, to 
divine predestination. As to the nature of the eucha- 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 299 

rist, the only recognized sacrament save baptism, while 
all renounced transubstantiation,^ Luther taught consub- 
stantiation, Zwingli symbolism, Calvin a spiritual real 
presence which he regarded something more than a 
mere product of symbolism. Worship of Mary and of 
angels was denounced as sin. 2 Polity. The protes- 
tants rejected the pope's primacy and the entire papal 
system as such, including canon law and clerical celi- 
bacy. Both sections agreed in giving up apostolic suc- 
cession and in subjecting the clergy like other citizens 
to civil authority,^ but while the Lutherans retained a 
modified episcopacy and linked the church closely with 
civil power, the Reformed organized presbyteries, which 
were to be autonomous. 3 Worship. Mass ^ in Latin 
was replaced by service in the vernacular, wherein 
preaching was prominent, especially among the Re- 
formed, who also retained fewer forms and less set 
liturgy. The laity communed in both kinds, church 
music came into new favor, the Reformed using psalms, 
Lutherans hymns as well. In general, the Lutheran 
liturgy was the more joyous, speaking more of God's 
fatherhood and love, the Reformed more solemn, dwell- 
ing upon God's judgeship, justice and wrath. The last 
difference affected the entire spirit of the two parties, 
their views of life and their moral walk. 

1 The view that the bread and wine, after their consecration at com- 
munion, are as to substance, the flesh and blood of the Redeemer, although 
retaining their former accidents. Consubstantiation differed from this 
catholic view only in supposing the old substance also to remain with the 
new. 

2 'The success of the Reformation, positively and negatively, turned 
chiefly upon the cooperation of three great deeds : rediscovery of classical 
antiquity by the humanists, rehabilitation of the pure gospel by the re- 



300 RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION 

formers, and lastly, supplanting the worldly-spiritual aristocracy of the 
later middle age by the, where possible, national, but at any rate modern, 
state.' — Roscher, Gesch. d. Nationaloek. in Detitschland, 32. 

^ The Lutherans set aside, in their view, not the mass itself \_Messe\ 
but the sacrifice of the mass. Hagenbach, II, 310. Here as elsewhere 
they wished merely to get rid of abuses and lay bare the old gospel and 
polity. Lutherans love to be called ' evangelical,' not ' protestant,' even 
to-day. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER IX 

Germany: Gindely, Gesch. d. 30 jdhrigen Kiieges** [the ablest: IV 
ends the Bohemian phase] ; H. of the 30 Yrs. W.,** 2 v. [tr. from an 
original briefer than the preceding]. Gardiner, 30 Yrs. W.** [in Ep. of 
H.: best single vol. on the subj.]; Prince Charles and the Spanish Mar- 
riage, 2 V. Schiller, 30 Yrs. W. [cf, his Piccolomini, Wallensteiti^ s Tod, 
and W.'s Lage7'\ Raumer, XVIth and XVIIth Cent.,** 2 v. Hausser, 
Gesch. d. rheinischen Pfalz, 2 v; Period of the Ref.,** II [see for lit.]. 
Droysen, Bernhard v. Weimar, 2 v.; Gustav Adolph*'^ 2 v. Gfrorer, 
do. Garnet, Gust. Adolphus [New Plut. Ser.]. Harte, do., 2 v. Stevens, 
L. and T. of do.* Topelius, T. of do. Mebold, jo jahriger Krieg, 2 v. 
Villermont, Ernest de Mansfeldt, 2 v. Utterodt, Ernest, Grafzu Mans- 
feld. Klopp, Tilly im jo j'dhr. Krieg, 2 v. Smyth, Lect. on Mod. H., 
I, xiii. Hallwich, Wallenstein^s Ende ; Gestalten aus W.^s Lager; 
Thurn. Ranke, Gesch. Wallensteins ; Popes, bks. ii sqq.; D. Gesch. 
vom Religionsfrieden bis zwn 30 jdhrigen Kr. [vol. iv. in fVerie']. Frei- 
tag, Bilder, III. Hurter, Gesch. Kaiser Ferdinands II, 4 v. Janssen, 
Gesch. d. deutschen Volkes, vols, iii sqq.; Reszdtate neuerer Forschh. iiber 
30 j'dhr. Kr. \_Tilb. Quar-Schr., 1861]. Putter, German empire, vol. ii. 
France : Ranke, Civil W. and Monarchy in Fr., XVI and XVII Cent., 
2 v. Martin, France, vols, xi-xiii. Michelet, do., vols, ix-xii. Cheruel, 
Fr. sous le ininistere de Mazarin, 3 v. Perkins, Fr. under Richelieu and 
Mazarin, 2 v. Baird, Rise of the Huguenots,** 2 v.; The Hug. and 
Henry of Navarre,** 2 v. de Felice, H. des protestants de Fr. Rob- 
son, Richelieu. Haag, France protestante, 9 v. Masson, Huguenots. 
Kitchin, France, bks. iii, iv. Student's France, bk. vi. [For other wks. 
on France in 17th century, see Adams, Manual, 315 sqq.] General: 
Heeren, Pol. Conseqq. of the Reformation. Villers, Essay on the Spirit 
and Influence of the Reformation. Symonds, Catholic Reaction, 2 v. 
Sterling- Maxwell, Don John of Austria. Motley, John of Barneveld,** 
2 v.; Dutch Republic, 3 v.; United Netherlands, 4 v. Zwiedeneck- 
Siidenhorst, Politik d. Venedig wdhrend d. 30 jdhrigen Kr.,\o\. i, 1882. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 



§ I General Cause and Character 

Gardiner, ch. i. Treitschke, D. Gesch. im XIX Jahrh., I, i. Heeren, 
as in bibliog. H'dusser, ch. xxx. 

Of that unity in European society so dear^ to the 
middle age the Reformation had about destroyed all 
real remnant, ruptured even the form. But men would 
not give up the idea, or the hope that it might again be 
realized. The Peace of Augsburg had established as 
legal a religious confession other than catholic, but its 
so unsatisfactory basis of agreement, toleration to rulers 
alone, rendered it a truce rather than a peace. In less 
than seventy-five years the faith of Luther had to enter 
upon a fresh struggle for life, protestant Europe against 
catholic, fiercer and longer than the first, which for a 
quarter of a century threatened to subjugate all Ger- 
many once more to pope and emperor. Now again 
appears even more painfully than at the Reformation, 
German inaptitude for political organization, the deteri- 
oration of the imperial constitution, the feebleness and 
nominal character of imperial power. The diet,^ lack- 
ing a popular element, could not feel or voice the real 
spirit of the nation. The people and their instituted 
authorities were at feud, a majority of them at least, 



304 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

allied with a minority of the princes against a majority 
of the princes supported by the emperor. The consti- 
tution offered no means of reconciliation. 

1 Which explains why so many most excellent men, like Erasmus and 
Sir Thomas More, clung to the ancient church in spite of their admission 
that it needed reforming in head and members. The formal unity of 
Christendom seemed to them essential to any real unity or power among 
Christians. Their scruple is more readily seen to be natural when we re- 
member that till the Peace of Westphalia, 1648, church and empire com- 
prised the sole European system and the only means for enforcing inter- 
national obligations. Cf. Ch. VI IT, § 19, n. i. 

^ The diet consisted of 3 regular colleges, i) the electors, ii) the other 
Fursten, iii) the representatives of the free cities. For its irregular mem- 
bers and its constitution after the Peace of Westphalia, see § 18. On the 
general subject, Bryce, 316 and v. Schulte, 312. The electorates even in 
the free cities were narrow corporations. 



§ 2 The Augsburg Settlement 

Kitchin, bk. iii. Gardiner, ch. i. Weber, II, 77. Heboid, ch. i. Klopp, Abschn. i. 

This had been forced by sheer weariness of war and 
was nowise duly considered, i From the cuitis regio 
eitis religio had followed exceeding hardship to both 
catholics and Lutherans, still more to Calvinists, no 
prince of the empire having embraced this confession 
till 1559/ then but one, no others till 1582. 2 The 
reservation ecclesiasticjint, relating to archbishops, 
bishops and abbots holding immediately of the empire, 
that no one of these on becoming protestant should 
retain his preferment, church property or subjects, was 
a mere imperial law^ and had never been agreed to by 
the Lutherans. 3 While the Peace decreed the status 
quo as to the properties ^ already secularized by protes- 
tant princes, the vital question whether secularization 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 305 

could go forward thereafter had never been decided. 
From the protestant insistence that they abandon the 
lands secularized before the Treaty of Passau, catholics 
naturally assumed the negative. Protestant lords on 
the other hand, from their right to fix their subjects' 
faith, argued that they might dispose of all ecclesiastical 
property within their territories and had acted upon this 
conclusion. Whatever understanding was had at Augs- 
burg seems to have been in the direction of the catholic 
view : the wishes and interests of the majority of the 
people involved favored the protestant. 

1 The Count Palatine turned Calvinist in 1559, the Archbishop of 
Cologne in 1582, the Margrave of Brandenburg and the Landgrave of 
Hessen-Kassel in 1604. By the letter of the Augsburg Convention, dock 
sollen alle andere \_Fursten~\, so ohgemeldeten beiden Religionen nicht 
anhdngig, in diesem Frieden nicht gemeinet, sondern gdntzlich ausge- 
schlossen sein [ § 4], Calvinists in these localities were no better off after 
than before the conversion of their FUrsten. In fact, however, the latter 
were too powerful to be interfered with. Contrary to Weber's implication 
this Peace did not, like that of Westphalia, guarantee toleration to subjects 
dissenting from their FUrst's faith. 

2 The entire Treaty is in form an imperial rescript, but the section [5] 
containing this reservatunt is phrased differently from the rest, basing it 
not on the diet's vote but in Krafft hochgedachter Rotn. Kayserl. Maj. 
gegebenen Vollmacht tind Heimstellung. 

3 Subordinate properties, that is, monasteries, nunneries and church 
lands which ecclesiastics held not from the emperor but from some Fiirst. 
The * secularization ' in question had meant in many cases mere appropria- 
tion by the Fiirst for his own profit, in others, the rule perhaps, devotion 
to the support of universities and schools. 



306 the thirty years* war 

§ 3 The Difficulty Aggravated 

Motley, Dutch Republic; United Netherlands. Prescott, Philip II. Symonds, vol. i. 
Batimgartcn, Vor d. Bartholoni'dus-Nacht. White, M. of St. Bartholomew. 
Ranks, Popes, bk. ii. Philippson, Contre-revolution religieuse au XV/e Steele. 
Allen, in Unitarian Rev., 1883. Michelet, vol. ix. 

Meantime many developments increasing hostility 
between the camps, invited new trial of strength, i 
Rise of the Society of Jesus, 1540. Its principle abso- 
lute, unquestioning obedience to ecclesiastical authority, 
its model of Christian life Saint Francis, its method of 
work control of education and thinkirg in the influential 
classes, this organization became at once a great power 
in Christendom.^ Trent, so soon, feels this, and its 
decrees, summarily anathematizing all protestant beliefs, 
evince the spirit of the new papal militia. 2 Reform 
within the catholic church.^ This largely from the 
Jesuits, spurred thereto by protestantism, yet so de- 
cided, real and moral was the betterment that many 
good men might deny to the Lutheran revolt all further 
raison d'etre. 3 The massacres of Vassy, 1562, and 
St. Bartholomew, 1572.^ In the latter, inhuman beyond 
conception, yet approved by the pope, at least twenty- 
five thousand French protestants, by some estimates 
not less than one hundred thousand, were butchered for 
their faith. Nothing could have smitten harder than 
this terrible deed upon the wedge that was forcing 
Christendom in two. 4 Persecution of protestants in 
the Netherlands by Spanish kings,* 1 568-1609. The 
policy of Charles V to make his Lowland provinces 
catholic and separate them from the empire, pursued 
with less skill by his successors, led to persistent rebel- 
lion, which all the craft, force and hellish cruelties of 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 30/ 

the Philips and their agents could not quell. Impos- 
sible that the cost in blood and torture, of protestant 
victories in this struggle should ever have been for- 
gotten. 

1 By 1618 there were even in Germany no less than 13,000 Jesuits. 
At the opening of the Council at Trent many catholic theologians showed 
a conciliatory temper, but were speedily silenced by the uncompromising 
ardor of the Jesuits. 

2 Philippson, as above, points out how, in the 1 6th century, Rome suc- 
ceeded in not only opposing a solid dike to the waves of protestantism but 
in actually beating them back and recovering a large part of the inundated 
land, especially in southern and western Germany. He handles i) the 
rise of the Jesuits, ii) the reestablishment of the Roman Inquisition, and 
iii) the Council of Trent. The Roman church owes a great debt to the 
protestant revolt for its own continued life and power. 

2 INIasson, Huguenots, 49. Duke Francois de Guise was proceeding 
from Joinville to Paris with a company of retainers. As he passed through 
Vassy on Sunday, March i, some Huguenots were assembled in a barn for 
worship. His followers commenced jeering, there was a tumult, the duke 
was wounded, his soldiers rushed upon the congregation sword in hand 
and cut down above 60 of them, wounding over 200 others. On St. Bar- 
tholomew, Baumgarten is the very best. He critically expounds the ante- 
cedent history. Cf. Hausser, ch. xxvii, Besant's Coligny, Michelet's France^ 
IX, xxi-xxvi, Baird's Rise of the Huguenots, 2 v, and Smiles's Huguenots. 

* Prescott and Motley narrate these in extenso. Cf. Hausser, chaps, 
xxii sqq. and Sterling-Maxwell's Don John. Egmont, Wm. the Silent, 
Maurice of Orange, and John of Barneveld were the great history-makers 
in this protracted struggle. It is said that in Netherlands alone during 
the 18 years of Torquemada's administration 10,220 persons were burned, 
I97»327 buried alive, drowned, imprisoned for life or reduced to beggary. 
Charles V on relinquishing his power, 1556, gives Spain and its colonies, 
also Franche-Comte, Naples, Milan and the 17 Netherland provinces to 
his son Philip II [i556-'98], these last thus though still dc iiire in the 
empire, made the dependencies of Spain. This relation, not religious 
difference, began the war. Open feud first rose over i) presence of Span- 
ish troops, and ii) power bestowed upon Philip's favorite, Granvella, arch- 
bishop of Mechelin, cardinal and primate over the whole church of tlie 
Netherlands. Protestantism meantime growing rapidly, here Calvinistic 



308 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

more than Lutheran, connected itself with the opposition to Granvella and 
the Spaniards, and before the recall of cardinal and troops had gathered 
fatal momentum. Concessions now were worse than futile. In 1567 
Philip resorts to force, using: i The Duke of Alva, till 1573: bloody and 
absolute rule, Wm. the Silent and over 100,000 of his fellow-subjects emi- 
grate, Egmont and Hoorn die as traitors, crushing and lawless taxation 
ruins business, driving the Dutch to sea as pirates, origin of their naval 
and commercial greatness, ii Reqiiesens, till 1576: milder measures but 
with the same aim, to subjugate politically and rehgiously. iii Don John 
of Austria [victor at Lepanto in 1571], till 1578: mutiny of Spanish sol- 
diers and their terrible ravages in Flanders and Brabant evoke the ' pacifi- 
cation of Ghent,' 1576, all the provinces agreeing to lay aside religious 
differences and unite to drive out the Spaniards, iv Alexander Farnese 
[of Parma, Philip's greatest general], till 1589: Union of Utrecht [1579], 
consisting of the 7 northern, mainly German and protestant, provinces: 
Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Guelders, Groningen, Friesland and Overyssel, 
declaring independence of Spain, 1 58 1, under Wm. the Silent as Stadt- 
holder. These provinces [Holland], aided by England [Sir Philip Sidney] 
and Philip II's war with that power [the Armada], also by Henry IV of 
France, maintained their independence until the Peace of Westphalia 
decreed it in 1648 and Spain at last recognized it in 1657. Philip's ac- 
quisition of Portugal in 1 581 enabled the Dutch to attack him in the Por- 
tuguese Indies, enterprise which carried Dutch commerce round the globe : 
Dutch E. India Co. founded 1602, Java 161 1, Batavia 1 619. The southern 
provinces [Belgium] were fully subjugated, remained Spanish till the 
Peace of Utrecht, 1713, and then passed, the portions ceded to France by 
the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1668, with the rest, to Austria, which re- 
tained them till the French Revolution. Schiller, Abfall d. Verein. Nieder- 
lande. 

§ 4 III Success of Protestantism 

Ranke, Popes, bk. vii. Gardiner, ch. i. H'dusser, ch. xxx. 
Lodge, Mod. Europe, ch. x. 

The Peace of Augsburg was followed by an unprece- 
dentedly disgraceful period of German history. The 
anti-catholic party, far from showing aught of construc- 
tive genius or wish, seemed at first hopelessly anarchic. 
I Politically. Protestants were not united, petty gov- 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 3O9 

ernments being mad with rivalry, each bent on self- 
aggrandizement no less than of old. Only external 
pressure or stimulus, and this but rarely, could force 
the champions of the new faith to present a solid front 
to foes. The Hanseatic cities^ feared neighboring 
lords and looked to the emperor for protection, as they 
did for intervention in favor of foreign trade. Spirit 
and energy were wanting. Gustavus Adolphus was 
the only protestant chief who betrayed any sense of 
having a cause. 2 Doctrinally. Sects sprung up in 
such multitude and fought so bitterly that it was hard 
not to condemn the primary schism whence all came, 
and natural to sigh for a central doctrinal authority. 
Subscribers and non-subscribers to the Formula of Con- 
cord ^ gnashed teeth at each other; both at Calvinists, 
Calvinists at both. Melancthon longed to die to escape 
the implacable quarrels of theologians.^ 3 Ecclesias- 
tically. The two reforming communions did not carry 
out or even understand the precious and far-reaching 
principle which they had professedly espoused, denying 
one another the very liberty of conscience which they 
had deserted Rome for refusing them. Like intoler- 
ance swayed the subdivisions of each. Also that author- 
ity in matters of faith which the pope had been cursed 
for arrogating, they yielded to secular rulers,* ignorant 
and often godless. From these three sources of con- 
fusion resulted a state of affairs so hopeless and threat- 
ening that many protestants were aghast, while emperor 
and pope may actually have felt it at once obligatory 
and possible to reassert the church's ancient sway. 

1 Those belonging to the Hanseatic League, a federation of certain 
commercial and maritime cities between the Elbe and the Baltic, dating 



3IO THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

from about 1260. Lubeck was its capital, Hamburg always a prominent 
member. From 1350 over 90 cities belonged to the League, between 
Esthonia and the Scheld-mouth, its field all northern Europe, its purposes 
mutual defence, security of the routes of commerce whether by land or 
water, winning and keeping privileges to trade, and the dispatch of all 
those matters now pertaining to private international law. 

2 Between the strict Lutherans and the Philipists or followers of [Philip] 
Melancthon, these being charged with leaning toward Calvin, although 
Melancthon's peculiar views, modifying the predestination doctrine and 
depreciating the Old Testament, were in the opposite direction. The 
Formula was subscribed in 1580 by 96 Lutheran lords, but not by all of 
either party, thus making three sects of Lutherans instead of two. 

3 Frederic V's woes in Bohemia and desertion by the other protestant 
electors he owed largely to his Calvinism. It was stiff indeed. Even after 
Gustavus had won back the Palatinate, Frederic would not give free- 
dom of worship to Lutherans there. And the Lutherans! Hohenegg, 
theologian to the Saxon court, said : * For it is as plain as that the sun 
shines at noon that Calvinism reeks with frightful blasphemy, error and 
mischief and is diametrically opposed to God's holy revealed word. To 
take up arms for the Calvinists is nothing else than to serve under the 
originator of Calvinism, the devil. We ought to give our lives for our 
brethren, but the Calvinists are not our brethren. We ought to love our 
enemies: the Calvinists are not our enemies but God's,' [Hausser]. Chan- 
cellor Crell for attempting to introduce Calvinism into Saxony was impris- 
oned ten years and then beheaded on charge of high treason. ' It was 
owing to this spirit that the struggling protestants of France were denied 
the indispensable support of the most powerful sect of their brethren in 
Germany, and that Lutheranism and Calvinism, reluctant to act together 
even in the most deadly crisis of the 30 Years' War, were nearly crushed 
one after the other under the iron heel of Austria' [Tuttle]. 

* There had never been a formal establishment of religion in Christen- 
dom before. Practically there had been, particularly when the empire was 
young and strong, yet it had rested hitherto rather upon general consent 
than upon express provision of law. Heeren, Pol. Conseqq., 61 sqq. 
Catholics bitterly reproached protestants with having splintered the church, 
giving it some hundreds of heads for one, all of them secular instead of 
spiritual. Janssen, vol. ii, 85. 



the thirty years war 3ii 

§ 5 Special Motives for Intervention 

Same auth. as at § 4. Janssen, vol. iii. Weber, II, 187. 

Several considerations in addition to all the above 
inclined the emperor to interfere. Most of the constant 
political tumult, revolt, defiance of law and order ^ since 
the Reformation opened had either grown visibly out 
of protestantism or connected itself therewith. The 
schism was the triumph of the feudal and divisive spirit, 
death to imperial or any central authority, and had 
brought persecution to numberless faithful sons of the 
ancient church. In particular : i Some two hundred 
monasteries had been seized since the Peace of Augs- 
burg, as to four of which legal decision had been 
rendered against protestant possession. The emperor 
construed this decision as a principle covering all such 
cases, and so acted wherever he had power. Thus 
when, in 1582, the Elector-Archbishop of Cologne,^ 
Duke of Westphalia, became a Calvinist, Spanish troops 
drove him from his lands, which with his see and 
dignity passed to a catholic. 2 Eight great northern 
bishoprics had been brought under protestant rule by 
what was alleged ^ to be an evasive interpretation of the 
reservatum ecclesiasticum, to the effect that, if the 
chapter cojtciirredy though not otherwise, a bishop, on 
changing confession, might retain his place and property. 
Protestants, long a majority of the population, bade fair 
to secure a majority in the diet as well. The last two 
points formed the real occasion of the Thirty Years' 
War, the catholics standing on, or nearest, the techni- 
cal right of the case, the protestants on the logic of 



312 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

events and the desires of the people. The catholic pro- 
gramme could have been carried through only by forci- 
bly re-converting hosts of protestants. 

1 Such as the Peasants' War and the anarchy at Munster. 

2 This case, concerning as it did an entire Fursient/mm, was not a 
parallel to cases of mere monasteries and nunneries, but it was analogous, 
as that of a Fiirst proceeding to protestantize communities and church 
properties catholic at the Peace of Augsburg. Nor was it parallel to the 
instances cited under 2, since the archbishop had acted against the oppo- 
sition of his chapter. The new incumbent was a brother to Maximilian 
of Bavaria. 

3 Not justly. The language of the reservatum [§ 5, Tr. of Augsburg] 
clearly presupposes that in the instances to which it relates the chapters 
remain catholic, commanding these to proceed to the election of a new 
♦ archbishop, bishop, prelate or other officer of spiritual estate,' as the 
case might be. 

§ 6 Union and League 

Gardiner, ch. i, sec. 4. Hausser, ch. xxxi. Weber, II, 188. Rttter, Gesch. d. 
deutschen Union. Villermont, ch. iv. 

A most vexatious case of catholic aggression, under 
pretence, perhaps according to the letter, of law, was 
that of Donauworth. This Lutheran imperial city, 
whence all catholics save members of a certain monas- 
tery had been excluded under the cums regio, was put 
to the ban of the empire in 1607, for disturbance to an 
illegal procession by the monks. Duke Maximihan of 
Bavaria, appointed to execute the sentence, on the 
ground that these had been seized since Passau,i restored 
their churches to the catholics, quartered soldiers on 
inhabitants persisting in Lutheranism, and joined the 
city to his duchy. In consequence of this high-handed 
procedure 2 and of Archduke Ferdinand's cruelty to prot- 
estants in Styria,^ a ' Union ' ^ of protestant princes and 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 313 

cities was formed in 1608, Frederic IV of the Palatinate 
its head, to prevent further infringements of the Augs- 
burg constitution. The Union did not mention defence 
of faith as among its objects. Next year the catholic 
princes, mostly ecclesiastics,^ created their * League,' 
headed by Maximilian, a Wittelsbacher^ like Frederic, 
to maintain imperial laws and to protect the catholic relig- 
ion. The Union expected aid from France,^ the 
League from Spain. The League was united, ably 
led, fired with ecclesiastical zeal. Maximilian indeed 
had political aims and a political mind, but he too had 
been educated^ and inspired by the Jesuits. Mark that 
League, not empire, is now the church's champion. 
Probably the League even so early meditated the status 
quo of 1555. The Union on the contrary was divided 
and without enthusiasm, Calvinists and Lutherans lack- 
ing mutual confidence, the northern Lutherans, headed 
by John George ^ of Saxony, who envied Frederic, hold- 
ing aloof altogether and urging compromise. It was 
further against the Union, that Christian of Anhalt at 
least had designs against the integrity of the empire, 
and that the contention of several protestants in the 
Diet of 1608 against the right of the majority to bind in 
cases of taxation or religion, threatened anarchy, and 
was construed as masking a plan for wholesale attacks 
on the church. 

1 See § 2, also § 5, n. 3. 

2 Understood to be against emperor Rudolph's will. Even this severe 
ruler was charged, like his father, emperor Maximilian II, with too great 
tenderness toward protestants. 

^ Soon to l)ecome emperor Ferdinand II. He was a grandson of 
emperor Ferdinand I. Naturally superstitious, and educated by Jesuits 



314 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

at Graz and at the Ingolstadt [now Munich] University, he felt toward 
protestants and all heretics exactly as his kinsman, Philip II of Spain, had 
felt. He preferred, he said, to beg or even be cut in pieces rather than 
submit to them, 'Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee?' he loved 
to repeat, 'and am not I grieved with those that rise up against Thee? I 
hate them with perfect hatred.' It was most true. He had taken a sol- 
emn vow to drive, at the risk of his life, all sects and errors from the lands 
he inherited. He daily spent from two to three hours in prayer and pious 
meditation. After a long morning prayer he would listen to two masses, 
attend divine service in the afternoon, devote a set time to the examination 
of his conscience, and close with an evening prayer. On a Sunday or a 
feast day he always heard two sermons. His sole literary activity con- 
sisted in the perusal of pious books. Gindely, ch, i. The great Kepler, 
hitherto resident in Graz, was among the protestants exiled by Ferdinand's 
fiery bigotry. 

* Besides Frederic, Christian of Anhalt and the Landgrave of Hessen- 
Kassel were the Calvinist leaders. Wiirttemberg, Bade-Durlach and Neu- 
burg were the chief Lutheran states. Fifteen imperial cities were mem- 
bers, of which Strassburg, Ulm and NUrnberg were the foremost. 

^ The three ecclesiastical electors of Mainz, Trier and Koln, and the 
bishops of WUrzburg, Salzburg, Regensburg, Augsburg and Passau. 

6 On the famous House of Wittelsbach, Ch. V, § 8, n. 5, Weber, I, 699, 
709. 

^ Henry IV of France, for some time before his assassination on May 
14, 1610, had been meditating a more or less formal European system, 
which, had his thought been carried out,, would have prevented the 30 
Years' War. The three religious confessions as well as the different forms 
of secular polity, the empire, royalties hereditary, royalties elective, and 
republics, were all to be equally legitimate, trade and navigation to be 
free, no two emperors ever to be elected in succession from the same 
house, the hereditary possessions of Austria to be circumscribed, and any 
trespass by one nation upon another to be redressed by the might of all. 
This seems to have been the first emergence of the pohcy removing the 
political surveillance of Christendom from church and empire, of the 
notion of a European concert such as has attended to the weightiest 
matters of international interest since. The conception influenced Riche- 
lieu's policy and the immortal M'ork of Grotius, and got itself to a great ex- 
tent realized in the Treaty of Westphalia [§ 17]. See Hausser, ch. xxix, 
and Gindely *s Rudolph II, ch. iii. 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 315 

8 At Ingolstadt, with archduke Ferdinand [n. 3]. On the character 
of these two men, Gindely, chaps, i, iv, v. 

9 This was John George I, 1611-56, nephew of Maurice [Ch. VIII, 
§ 19]. Saxony had also the electors John George II, 1656-80, III, 1680- 
'91, and IV, 1 69 1 -'94. All of them sympathized too much with Austria. 
Weber, II, 76. 

§ 7 Contest for Julich-Cleve 

Rattke, Popes, bk. vii, ch. i. Weber, H, 188. Tttttle, H. of Prussia, ch. iv. 
Gardiner, 21 sq. Motley, Barneveld, chaps, i, v, vi. 

In 1609, the male line of the yulicJi-Cleve ducal house 
becoming extinct,^ its immense territories were claimed 
by both the Elector of Brandenburg and the Count 
Palatine of Neuburg, representing the nearest female- 
heirs. As the laws of the house forbade its lands to 
be divided, Brandenburg and Neuburg, the estates of 
the lands concurring, had agreed''^ to possess in com- 
mon, but Emperor Rudolph II, supported by the 
League and by Spain,^ declared the fief escheated 
and sent Archduke Leopold to seize it by the aid of 
Spanish troops. France, now under Henry IV firmly 
allied with the Union,^ also England and Holland, dis- 
patched troops to oppose, retaking the fortress of Jiilich. 
The ensuing truce between League and Union was 
ruptured by the Count Palatine's quarrel^ with the 
Elector, the former joining the catholics and the 
League, the latter the Calvinists and the Union. The 
resulting war, wherein Spain again supports the League, 
the United Netherlands the Union, continues till the 
Treaty of Xanten,^ 1614. Final division was indeed 
only arrived at in 1666, when Brandenburg, and so 
Prussia, receiving Cleve, Mark and Ravensberg,^ first 
set firm foot in Western Germany. 



3l6 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

1 Duke William, i539-'92, had two daughters, Mary Eleanor and 
Anna, and a son John William. He left a will that should John Willi.-^m 
die childless, as he did in 1609, the duchy should go to Mary Eleanor's 
heirs, or if she had none, to Anna's. Mary Eleanor had no sons but her 
daughter had married John Sigismund, elector of Brandenburg. Anna 
married Philip Ludwig, count palatine of Neuburg, and had a so>u, Wolf- 
gang William. The letter of the will favored Brandenburg, the usual 
preference in law and usage of male heirs favored Neuburg. 

2 By the convention of Dortmund, 1609. The estates of any Fiirsten- 
thum were the prelates, knights and cities, v. Schulte, 253. 

3 In the year 1609 Spain effected a truce with the Netherlands for 12 
years, and was hence at liberty to turn her arms in other directions. 

* France sent troops to the Union's aid even after Henry IV's death 
in the year 16 10. 

^ It had been partly arranged that the young count, Wolfgang Wil- 
liam, should marry his cousin, elector John Sigismund's daughter, but 
count and elector fell out, the latter striking the former smartly on the 
cheek. 

6 This might have been definitive but for the immediate outbreak of the 
30 Years' War, ripping up this and all such engagements and offering 
each side the hope of gaining all. Another temporary bargain was patched 
up at Diisseldorf in 1629. This matter even the great date of 1648 failed 
to see settled. Cleve was a duchy, Mark and Ravensberg both counties. 

■^ Jiilich and Berg with the city of Dusseldorf were confirmed to Neu- 
burg. Neuburg proper was a small territory between Regensburg and 
Niirnberg in what is now northern Bavaria. 

§ 8 Bohemia's Royal Charter 

Gardiner, ch. ii. Gindely, Rudolph IT; 30 Yrs. W., I, iii; Gesch. 
d. Bomisch. Majest'dtsbriefes. 

Meantime affairs at the other extremity of the empire 
assumed a threatening aspect. Through the policy, 
most liberal, of the enlightened Emperor Maximilian 
W} the hereditary Hapsburg territories,^ of Austria, 
Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, had become very strong- 
holds of protestantism. In all these lands the burghers 
and nobles had espoused the Reformation almost en 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 317 

masse? Tyrol alone clung to the old faith. In Hun- 
gary and the realms of the Bohemian crown, where 
Hapsburg archdukes had ruled as kings,* a majority 
of the people and almost all the nobles had also, partly 
from memory of Hus, renounced Catholicism, Emperor 
Rudolph II, king of Bohemia, less tolerant than his 
father, had yet been forced in order to retain the loyalty 
of his Bohemian subjects, to grant a charter in 1609 
assuring to every person free choice between the cath- 
olic and the Bohemian-protestant confession.^ The 
right to build churches^ was hereby bestowed not 
universally but only on some fourteen hundred nobles 
and forty-two towns. On the royal domains alone was 
this right conferred upon the people themselves. The 
question whether in this matter ecclesiastical should be 
treated as royal domains was not decided."^ The pro- 
testants of Braunau built a church on the land of the 
Abbot of -Braunau, those of Klostergrab on the land 
of the Archbishop of Prag. Mathias, having become 
king, in 161 1 declared this illegal. Perhaps legiti- 
mately, but when he compelled protestants to catholic 
services on his own domains, and made them subject 
to the catholic clergy, the royal charter was plainly a 
dead letter. Protestants began to prepare for the worst. 

1 From Maximilian I [1493-1519], the succession of emperors was [i] 
his grandson Charles V, i5i9-'58, [ii] C.'s brother Ferdinand I, 1558-64, 
[iii] F.'s son Maximilian II, i564-'76, [iv] M.'s son Rudolph II, 1576- 
1612, [v] R,'s brother Mathias, i6i2-'i9, [vi] M.'s cousin and adopted 
son Ferdinand II, 1619-37, C^ii] F.'s son Ferdinand III, i637-'58, Maxi- 
milian II married his cousin, daughter of Charles V, and had 15 children. 
Ferdinand II was the son of the 13th [a son]. 

2 These were little more than administrative divisions, and did not 
annul the single sovereignty of the head of the Hapsburg house. 



3l8 TPIE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

3 Emphatically disproving Macaulay's easy generalization, making prot- 
estantism Teutonic and Catholicism after the Reformation non-Teutonic or 
Romanic. These provinces were the most strongly Romanic parts of the 
then empire. Cf. § ii, below, and Hausser, ch. xxxi. Maximilian II was 
half a protestant, giving the new faith its start. His successors, its foes, 
killed it out. 

* On the relation of Bohemia and Hungary to Austria, Freeman, Hist'l 
Geog., 324 sqq. Bohemia was a member of the empire, Hungary not. 
Bohemia had previously been under the Austrian crown for a brief time, 
viz., from about 1440 to 1457, but the relation was permanently estab- 
lished only on the marriage of Ferdinand, soon-to-be emperor Ferd. H, 
with Anna, sister of the deceased king Ludwig of Hungary and Bohemia, 
who fell in the battle of Mohacs, 1526, against the Turks. The dependent 
lands of Lusatia, Silesia and Moravia passed at the same time. Excepting 
the brief rule of Frederic [§ ii] and the revolution-time of i848-'9, Hun- 
gary and Bohemia have ever since obeyed the Hapsburg sceptre. It must 
be said, however, that Hapsburg was during and long after Ferdinand's 
day obliged to share Hungary partly with the Turks, partly with Hunga- 
rian rivals. 

^ Hussite, called ' utraquist ' from its gift to the laity of the communion 
in both kinds: sub utraque specie. Gindely, ch. iii. Nearly all Bohe- 
mian protestants belonged to this confession, being neither Lutherans nor 
Calvinists. 

® Hausser, II, 86, mistakenly states that the permission was universal, 
which Gindely, ch. i, disproves. 

'' Gindely [large original], vol. i, ch. ii, best discusses this. The prot- 
estants interpreted the constitution as including ecclesiastical lands among 
royal. Another ominous fact M^as the administration of the land by a 
board of seven Statthaller, of whom four were catholics. 



§ 9 War Begun : Periods 

Ranke, Popes, bk. vii, ch. ii. Gardiner, ch. ii. Villennotit, ch. v. Gindely, 
I, i, ii. Motley, Barneveld, ch. xiii. 

The throne of Bohemia had originally been elective, 
and the estates endured, expecting soon, on Mathias's 
death, to choose a protestant king, either the Elector 
Palatinate or the Elector of Saxony. But before a 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 319 

Bohemian diet called in 1617, the emperor's lawyers 
maintained^ that Mathias's election was exceptional, 
and partly by specious argument, partly by intimidation, 
brought the estates to renounce their right of electing 
a king, and to accept Archduke Ferdinand as their king 
by hereditary right. Such a eoiip d'etat was rendered 
easier in that Ferdinand, bigoted catholic though he 
was, accepted the royal charter. Bohemia's golden 
time for opposing Austria was thus lost. The Kloster- 
grab church was soon levelled and protestants excluded 
from that in Braunau. Revolt seemed the only prot- 
estant road to freedom. On May 23, 161 8, occurred 
the famous 'defenstration' ^ of the emperors represen- 
tatives in Prag. By this act the protestant leaders in 
Bohemia proclaimed defiance and invoked war — a war 
which raged from Alps to Baltic and from Moravia to 
the Atlantic, a war which, while especially devastating 
and impoverishing all Germany, involved, the first war 
in all history to do this, every country of Europe. The 
years from 161 8 to 1648 naturally fall into two main 
periods, divided by the Edict of Restitution, 1629, the 
diplomatic intervention of France and the armed of 
Sweden, 1630. In the first period, predominantly re- 
ligious, marked by imperial triumph and ended by the 
subjugation of all Germany, were three phases (i) the 
Bohemian^ to the battle of White Mountain, 1620, (2) 
the Palatinate^ to the Danish intervention, 1625, (3) the 
Danish. In the second or Swedish-French period, 
almost solely political, which sees the decline of impe- 
rial power, are also three phases, (4) a victorious and (5) 
a disastrous Szvedish, separated by the death of Gusta- 



320 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

vus Adolphus, November, 1632, the last ending with the 
Treaty of Prag, 1635, which virtually renewed the Edict 
of Restitution, and (6) the phase of armed French inter- 
vention, extending to the end of the war, 1648. 

1 Gindely, ch. i, sec. 3, admits that all the Hapsburg accessions to the 
Bohemian crown except that of Mathias alone had been by way of accept- 
ing \_annehmev'\, not of electing, but notices that this last had as good a 
right, so far as it went, to become an authoritative precedent as had that 
of Ferdinand I in 1526. That election was the ancient way all seem to 
have conceded. 

2 The Statthalter Martinitz and Slawata and the Secretary Fabricius 
were thrown from the windows of the Prag Castle, the * good old Bohe- 
mian custom ' for inflicting capital punishment. They fell nearly 60 feet, 
yet, by a miracle as catholics believed, not one was killed or greatly 
harmed. 

§ 10 Attitude of Europe 

Gindely, I, iv. Ranke, Popes, bk. vii, ch. iii. Villermont, ch. xiv. Gardiner, ch. 
iii, sec. 3, ch. iv, sec. 4; Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage. Hallam, 
Const'l Hist., on reign of Charles I. Motley, Barneveld. 

His noble subjects being hostile to Ferdinand, elected 
emperor in 1619,^ so that no Austrian power was at 
hand to be mistaken for imperial, we see best at the 
opening of this war how low imperial authority had 
sunk. Ferdinand was thrown for resources entirely 
upon free-will offerings. Spain was his chief support. 
Philip III, now in fear of death and feeling the whole 
honor and fortune of his house to be involved in the 
emperor's success, sent enormous subsidies.^ Other 
earnest allies of the emperor were the pope, the League,^ 
the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the King of Poland, 
the last two his brothers-in-law. Even Karl Emanuel 
of Savoy, at first reckoned, and inclined to be, a prot- 
estant, so soon as disappointed in his hope of election 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 321 

to the Bohemian crown, offered his services to Ferdi- 
nand/ as did John George of Saxony while still profess- 
ing fullest devotion to protestant principles. The 
motive to these alliances even where least selfish, was 
not loyalty or political duty, but either religion, friend- 
ship, policy, or hatred to some member of the Union. 
Louis XIII, Bourbon though he was, swayed by his 
clergy, acted at first, strange to say, favorably to Haps- 
burg interests.^ He would allow France to mediate, 
but not to oppose the emperor. Even Richelieu tried 
to pacify Hungary. The neutrality of England, whence 
Frederic V of the Palatinate hoped so much, was still 
more remarkable. At length a thoroughly protestant 
nation, the English almost to a man wished to support 
the revolt, especially as Frederic, now its head, was son- 
in-law to their king. But James I, infatuated with the 
thought of a Spanish alliance, feeling the gravity of 
Frederic's course, which much resembled the individ- 
ualism and * fist-right ' of the dark ages, and offended 
at his rash openness to Bohemian advances, would not 
send a shilling or a man to aid the Bohemian cause. ^ 
Trifling assistance came from Silesia and Lusatia, 
sympathy from Denmark and Sweden. Holland^ was 
the only ally on whom the rebels could depend. 

1 On the imbroglio at this election, Hausser, II, 98 sqq. 

2 Yet with his ministers, Khevenhiller, Ferdinand's ambassador, labored 
long in vain and went so far as to threaten peace with protestants, cession 
of Bohemia and Hungary, Austria to recoup itself with a piece of the 
Spanish Netherlands. 'Look out for your neck, speaking so,' said Aliaga, 
PhiUp's confessor. * I will gladly die for my master,' replied Khevenhiller, 
* but not exchange with you, for your place in hell will be lower thon 
Luther's or Calvin's.' 

3 Maximilian of Bavaria its leader and most earnest member, earnest 



322 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

to be sure not for strictly imperial interests [§ 13] but for Catholicism. 
The duke had beforehand the emperor's promise of the palatinate elector- 
ship in case Frederic accepted the Bohemian election, and of whatever 
palatinate territory should be conquered in the war. Gindely, ch. iv, sec. 3. 
But for this promise the war might have ended in 1623. The pope sent 
subsidies to both emperor and League — strange direction for money to 
take ! 

* But they were not accepted. Ferdinand did not know how far Karl 
Emanuel had gone with the protestants, but suspected. 

^ Yet in 1622 he made peace with the Huguenots, in 1623 sent money 
to German protestants, in 1624 called Richelieu to his councils, which very 
soon involved resumption of France's traditional anti-Hapsburg policy. 
Ranke is uncertain whether or not the great cardinal cherished his anti- 
Hapsburg purpose at first. 

6 The utmost which James could be induced to do was to promise 
Frederic ,^25,000 for defence of the Palatinate and to mediate a loan for 
him from the king of Denmark, his brother-in-law. Private parties in 
England sent ;^i 3,000 as a further loan. The young electress Elizabeth, 
Frederic's wife and James I's daughter, was the mother of Rupert, the 
famous cavalier in the campaigns against Cromwell in England, where he 
fought for his uncle, Charles I. He was born just before the battle of 
White Mountain [next §]. It was through this Elizabeth that the English 
royal house of Hannover descended from James I. 

■^ Elector Frederic V was, through his mother, the grandson of William 
of Orange. 



§ II Bohemian Phase of the War 

Ranke, as at § 9. Gardiner, chaps, ii, iii. Gindely, I, v, vi [cf. his large 
original, vol. iii]. H'dusser, ch. xxxii. 

This began with victory. Moravia, Silesia, Hungary 
and the Austrian estates aid, and the imperiaUsts are 
driven within the gates of Vienna. But this success 
resulted ill, leading the rebels to underestimate the mag- 
nitude of the contest begun. By electing Frederic 
king they not only invited the emperor's uttermost 
efforts for vengeance, but alienated friends. Their 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 323 

army, too small, unpaid, irregularly recruited, poorly 
equipped and disciplined, lapsed into a mob. The new 
king,^ young, rash, fickle and without energy, brought 
his kingdom neither internal betterment nor foreign 
allies. His chief advisers disagreed.^ The Union, 
about passive all along, dissolved in 1621. On the other 
hand defeat roused Ferdinand to incredible exertion. 
Mustering a considerable^ army, Spanish and Saxon, 
with that of the League, he breaks the siege of Vienna, 
pushes back Mansfield and Thurn, and in the battle of 
White Mountain,* 1620, forces Bohemia to sue for peace. 
The king barely escapes, the charter is declared null, 
Bohemia loses all vestige of independence. Protestant- 
ism was so totally suppressed that the country continues 
to this day more catholic than Rome.^ Twenty-seven 
leaders in the rebellion were beheaded and an equal 
number spared the same fate only by flight. Seven 
hundred and twenty-eight nobles suffered total confisca- 
tion of property, thirty thousand families left the land 
and the entire population that had sympathized with 
the rising was reduced to beggary. 

1 He was but 23 years old, and although pawning some jewels to 
secure funds for the war, showed little zeal on the whole. He was too 
Calvinistic and strict, insisted that crucifixes, pictures and the like be re- 
moved from churches, etc. Elizabeth too was no favorite while in Prag. 
A contemporary poet sang of Frederic : 

' O lieber Friez, inezn gjit Gesell, 
Lassfahren diese Kron / 
Bereitet ist dir schoti die Hell 
Zu einejn gewissen Lohn. 
Demi tuelcher sich erhohen thttt, 
F'dllt tief in den Abgrund; 
Ilun ivird vergolten sein Hochmtith 
Wol in der Helleri Schlnfid.' 

2 Anhalt, LTansfield and Thurn. They did not act in concert. Thus 
Mansfield was not present at White Mountain but engaged in the siege of 



324 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

Pilsen, the chief Bohemian city that adhered to the imperial cause. 
Gindely, ch. v, at end, alleges that at this time Mansfield was making 
overtures to League and emperor to accept him into their service. He 
demanded 400,000 gulden and full amnesty, 

3 All the military operations of the opening war were on a petty scale. 
Schlick crossed the Austrian border with 4000 men. Mansfield captured 
Pilsen with but 1800. At White Mountain the protestants had 13,000, 
the catholics together 24,000. 

4 As the armies faced each other just prior to this battle the men of 
each amused themselves by calling those of the other names : ' heretics,' 
•rebels,' 'countrymen,' 'buffoons' in one direction, 'papists,' 'robbers,' 
'incendiaries,' etc., in the other. 'Hogs' was an epithet constantly ap- 
plied to the Bavarians, and not by the enemy alone. Maximilian asked 
his court jester how he thought the battle would go. ' Just as at cards,' 
he replied, 'the soiv [then the name for the ace] will take the kittg,'' i.e., 
the Bavarians would beat the sham king of Bohemia. The Bohemians 
tried to engage the Turks in their cause, — without success, 

^ On these terrible proceedings, Gindely, ch. vi, and Reuss, La destruc- 
tion du protestantisme en Boheme, Strassburg, 1867. The Bohemian 
Brethren, same as the modern Moravians, were driven out at once, the 
Lutherans a little later. Anabaptists were treated with especial cruelty. 
The Gneisenau family, from whom sprung the Gneisenau of Ligny and 
Waterloo fame [Ch. X, § 19], was among the emigrants. At the begin- 
ning of this war in the Bohemian county of Glatz not a single catholic 
church remained, all having gone over to protestantism. When Frederic 
the Great marched into the county some 125 years later the population 
was catholic to a man, and in the middle of it stood proudly the Pilgrim 
Church of Albendorf as a monument to the catholic victory of White 
Mountain. — Treitschke, D. Gesch. hi XIX Jahrh., I, ii. Some estates of 
banished owners were v\'holly confiscated, some only in part, the residue 
to be paid by the government. Payment was made in coins worth only 
^ their face, which were then declared no longer a tender except at their 
real value. The emperor wished to use the same inhumanity in Lusatia, 
conquered by John George, as in Bohemia, desisting only when that slug- 
gish prince, much to his credit, threatened active enmity. Tilly is believed 
to have been purposely slow after the battle, to give protestants opportunity 
for flight. 



the thirty years war 32$ 

§ 12 Palatinate Phase 

Ranke, as at § 9. Gardiner, ch. iii. Gindely, I, vii [large original, vol. iv.] 

Frederic was, without trial, stripped of his lands and 
his electoral dignity and put to the ban of the empire, 
1 62 1, his fellow-electors of Saxony and Brandenburg 
protesting yet declining to make common cause with 
him.^ A slight lull in hostilities was effected by the 
strong wish of Spain, exhausted and impoverished ^ 
through her long struggle in the Netherlands, of which 
for her this new war was the continuation. But, a con- 
ference at Brussels toward peace, 1622, having failed 
owing to the inability of either side to suggest other 
than temporizing plans, war began afresh, Tilly and 
Spain on one side, against Mansfield, Christian of 
Brunswick, the Burggrave of Bade-Durlach and the 
English General Vere. These last, dividing^ in the 
face of Tilly, that unmatched strategist defeated one 
by one : reverses which Mansfield's subsequent slight 
success against the Spaniards^ could not retrieve. 
Meantime the Diet of Regensburg, 1623,^ against the 
will of Saxony and Brandenburg and the solemn pro- 
test of Spain's ambassador,^ sanctions the spoliation of 
Frederic and bestows his electorship^ with the High 
Palatinate upon Maximilian of Bavaria, Spain retain- 
ing the Rhenish. The whole Palatinate was forcibly 
brought back to Catholicism, Lusatia passed to Saxony.^ 

1 His rash act had frightened them. Saxony opposed him also because 
should he recover Bohemia he would be too contiguous and too powerful, 
aside from his having two electoral votes, a thing unheard of. The Agree- 
ment of Mlihlhausen also greatly quieted these electors, League and em- 
peror promising that no protestant Fiirst holding secularized property 
should be disturbed so long as loyal to the empire. 



326 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

2 Contrary to common opinion Spain was never a wealthy land. See 
Roscher, Pol. Economy, I, 181. By this time it was far from powerful in 
any respect. 

^ Partly because they could not agree, partly the better to support their 
armies on plunder. Vere was left in charge of Heidelberg, Mannheim 
and Frankenthal. Tilly vanquishes the others, Bade-Durlach at Wimpfen, 
Brunswick at Hochst, then returns to dislodge Vere. Frederic now dis- 
misses Mansfield and Brunswick, who turn freebooters. Both make their 
way to Holland, where they are strong enough to force the Spaniards to 
raise the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. They then enter and ravage West- 
phalia, Tilly, unable to drive them out, invades the Lower Saxon Circle, 
to induce the wavering protestant princes there to side with the empire 
against those marauders. 

'^ The 12-year truce of Spain with the Netherlands agreed to in 1609 
was now over, and hostilities had begun again. The operations of that 
war are mainly indistinguishable from those of the 30 Years' War at large. 

^ It had convened on Nov. 22 of the preceding year. Hausser will 
not call this or any other ' meeting of the princes' a ' diet,' till 1640. 

^ Spain objected partly out of regard for James I, partly from fear that 
so violent a measure would indefinitely prolong the war. 

■^ On the history of the electorships, Ch. V, § 8, n. 5. The High Pala- 
tinate was in what is now northern Bavaria, roughly coincident with the 
triangle formed by the cities of Regensburg, Nlirnberg and Eger. The 
Lower was the land on both sides of the Rhine about Heidelberg, reach- 
ing from Wimpfen on the eastern side nearly to Trier on the western, and 
northward on the left bank of the river to beyond the Main-mouth. 
Three-fourths of it were west of the Rhine. Protestants who would not 
recant were banished. Elector Frederic V died Nov. 17, 1632, eleven 
days after Gustavus Adolphus. Elizabeth lived 30 years from this time in 
the Hague, then in England till her death in 1662. 

^ To pay for John George's aid to the emperor. 



§ 13 Danish Phase: Waldstein 

Gardiner, chaps, iv-vii. Gindely, I, viii, ix. Hausser, ch. xxxiii. 

The protestant rulers were now thoroughly alarmed,^ 
and King Christian IV of Denmark, who as Duke of 
Holstein was a Fiirst of the empire, partly perhaps out 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 327 

of fear 2 that Gustavus Adolphus would do this, put 
himself forward as the armed champion of protestantism 
against emperor and League. Receiving money from 
Richelieu and promises from England and Holland he 
crosses the Elbe in 1625 and for one campaign can defy 
Tilly. But a helper far mightier than Christian had 
meantime enlisted on the emperor's side, — Waldstein,^ 
whose rise was the greatest event in the war thus far, 
giving Ferdinand an army of his own. Hitherto he 
had not had this, Tilly being in the service of Maxi- 
milian and the League, who, notice, in reality cared for 
the empire little more than did the protestant chiefs 
themselves. With one stroke Waldstein* crushes 
Mansfield at Dessau, 1626, so that he reappears no 
more, then rushes to the defeat already begun by Tilly, 
of Christian, who is forced to the Peace of Liibeck, 
1629, and to abstain henceforth from the quarrel.^ In 
the same year 1629 follows the Edict of Restittition^ 
the protestants to restore all ecclesiastical property 
taken since Augsburg and only the adherents of the 
Augsburg confession to have free exercise of religion. 
This terrible decree was executed in its own stern spirit, 
partly by Tilly, partly by Waldstein, now Duke of 
Mecklenburg and Admiral of the Baltic, holding North 
Germany with a hundred thousand men. 

1 If the emperor could so summarily dispose of one protestant state he 
might of another. Besides, in the vain peace negotiations of 1626 Ferdi- 
nand and Maximilian would no longer hold out the MUhlhausen promise 
[§ 12, n. i] to guarantee secularized bishoprics in present hands on con- 
dition of loyalty. 

2 Droysen believes this to have been a strong motive, which Gardiner 
doubts. Brandenburg and Sweden were negotiating. Christian would of 
course belong in the Lower Saxon Circle, where Tilly's presence was a 



328 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

burden and a threat. Charles I of England promised Christian money but 
could not get parliament to vote it. The Danish king called this the 
cause of his defeat. A small amount was actually raised by Charles's 
unconstitutional forced loan, and Sir Charles Morgan sent to Christian's 
aid with four or five thousand men, not enough to alter the result. 

3 Albrecht von * Waldstein ' [according to Gindely and Oncken the 
original form of the name. Hist. Zeitschr. Jahrg. 1 883, 562] was born in 
1583 at Hermanic in Bohemia of a Utraquist [§ 8, n, 5] family, and early 
orphaned. He received education first at the Jesuit school in Olmlitz, 
then in Altdorf, then in Padua, where mathematics and military studies 
engaged him. He travelled much in the empire and abroad. For ser- 
vices against Venice in 161 7 Ferdinand made him colonel and count. 
Enormously rich by both inheritance and marriage he purchased a vast 
number of the estates confiscated in Bohemia after 1620. He maintained 
a more than royal pomp and state. Defence of the emperor from the 
Hungarians made him a FUrst of the empire as duke of Friedland, 1624. 
Waldstein began Ufe among protestants but became catholic, William the 
Silent started as a catholic but turned protestant. On the question of 
Waldstein's guilt, § 16, n. 5. 

^ With 50,000 men, recruited in the most irregular and illegal manner. 
Mansfield, the soldier of fortune, flees with a puny force through Silesia 
to Hungary, hoping for an alliance with Bethlen Gabor, head of the Hun- 
garian protestant revolt- Coldly received he pushes on to Venice, where 
sickness seizes him and he retires to a village of Bosnia to die. 

^ Later, i643-'6, Christian even aided the imperialists, envious of the 
Swedes. 

6 Hausser, II, 123 sqq.; Gardiner, ch. vii. The edict was carried through 
in Swabia, Franconia, Westphalia and Lower Saxony. Khevenhiller [§ 10, 
n. 2] believed RicheHeu to be the real inspirer of this edict, as well as of 
the dismissal of Waldstein, later. The catholic victory was complete, 
except at Stralsund, Avhich, succored from Sweden, Waldstein could not 
take, and 'every electoral prince, every petty vassal, neutral or belligerent, 
awaited in anxious suspense the announcement of Ferdinand's terms* 
[Tuttle]. 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 329 



§ 14 Waldstein's Policy 

Ranke, Gesch. Walletisteins. Gindely, 11, i- Gardiner, as at § 13. 
Schilling, Qtiellenbuch, 127. 

While Waldstein brought to the emperor indepen- 
dence and sweeping victory, his intervention and policy, 
under the circumstances, prepared ultimate defeat by 
alienating the League from imperial interests, i Wald- 
stein wished only to punish breach of imperial law and 
constitution,^ the League to annihilate protestantism. 
2 He forced catholics to help support his army, which 
the League opposed. 3 He proposed to turn over all 
lands confiscated in the Lower Saxon Circle to George 
of Liineburg, a Lutheran general in his army : the 
ecclesiastical Elector of Mainz claimed a part. 4 His 
abstractly most rational but at the same time most im- 
practicable and fatal idea was to recover sovereignty 
and public power in the empire entirely to the emperor, 
humbling and subordinating the nobility as had been 
done in France and England. This thought, along with 
Waldstein's unexpected triumphs, led Ferdinand, fancy- 
ing himself another Charles V or Karl the Great, into 
foolish and wholly illegal measures. .He raised money 
without the diet's sanction, put the dukes of Mecklen- 
burg 2 to ban without process, invested one of his sons 
with four bishoprics, gave to Jesuits instead of its orig- 
inal possessors most of the property wrested from prot- 
estants. 

1 He used to say, ' The devil and hell-fire take the priests ' [Hausser]. 

2 They were restored to their regular standing and estates by the diet 
of Regensburg in 1630. 



330 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 



§ 15 GusTAvus Adolphus 

Heboid, vol. ii. Droysen, Bernhard v. Weimar, bk. i. Gardiner'^ 
ch. iv, sec. 5, ch. vii. Gindely, II, ii. 

This great king, who had long been waiting ^ to strike 
a blow on the protestant side, now saw his opportunity. 
France was renewing against the empire her old pre- 
tensions in Italy and had already taken some towns. 
If the emperor did not yield here Richelieu was certain 
to support Gustavus. Those protestant chiefs who in- 
clined to be loyal to the emperor and to fear Gustavus 
as a foreigner, would still side with the latter unless the 
Edict of Restitution were modified. At this great 
crisis 2 Ferdinand yielded to his zeal for the church and 
gave up the last chance which ever presented itself to 
make the Holy Roman Empire a unit and a power. 
To his protestant subjects he would concede nothing 
save the dismission of Waldstein, which the catholics 
also demanded, while with France he negotiated so ill 
that Richelieu became an active supporter of Gustavus. 
Outlook for both parties was now totally changed : 
Waldstein idle, even the League suspecting the em- 
peror, Saxony at last as well as Brandenburg in arms 
against him. The protestants on the other hand were 
for the first time united, led by the ablest captain alive, 
backed by French money and the diplomacy ^ of Riche- 
lieu. In that rich galaxy of great* men which illus- 
trates the Thirty Years' War, Gustavus Adolphus is 
the principal star. Gustavtis rex, wrote Cardinal Ca- 
raffa,^ ctti painu Siiecia nnUiiDi, Eiiropa pancos dedit. 
His policy — he the first protestant leader to have one 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 33 1 

— was positive and constructive, aiming at (i) the 
dominion of the Baltic Sea, (2) a corpus evangelicorimi^ 
to be reahzed if necessary by creating a protestant em- 
pire, and (3) the use of RicheUeu to the furtherance of 
protestantism instead of allowing the wily cardinal, as 
he wished to do and finally did, merely to aggrandize 
France at Germany's expense. In war the general 
before whom both Tilly and Waldstein preferred to 
retreat was even greater than in diplomacy, worthy 
of the rank assigned him by Napoleon as the foremost 
captain of all history. He invented a more efficient 
order of battle for both infantry and cavalry, at the 
same time making artillery so light as to march and 
manoeuvre with a speed never previously attained. Be- 
fore his soldiers, moral, conscientious, the best disci- 
plined in Europe, adoring and obeying him and using 
his tactics, the hireling armies of that age could not 
stand a moment. 

1 Concurrent motives were i) to avenge the dukes of Mecklenburg, 
his relatives, ii) to revenge the refusal of his mediation at the Peace of 
Llibeck, iii) to defeat plans to make the empire a Baltic power, and iv) to 
pay back Austria for aiding Poland against Sweden [n. 2]. For the just 
antecedent Swedish history, Hausser, II, 131 sqq. Gustavus inherited 
from his father three wars, i) with Denmark, neither party being victo- 
rious, ii) with Russia, Sweden securing the entire Baltic coast of that 
country, and iii) with Poland, lasting till 1629, ending with the recogni- 
tion of Sweden's claim to the whole Baltic coast opposite Poland, and the 
cession of considerable tracts besides. The Polish king, Sigismund, was 
Gustavus's nephew, but as a catholic and the brother-in-law of the em- 
peror, he had received active aid from the latter in the war. Promised 
1,200,000 livres annually by Richelieu Gustavus lands in Pomerania in 
1630, just as Richelieu, leading his army in person, has become master of 
Savoy and- orders an advance on Saluzzo. At first only the Mecklenburg 
dukes and a few other lords join him. The hesitation of Saxony and 
Brandenburg, yet hoping for fair terms from Ferdinand, loses Magdeburg 



332 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

to the protestants, its commandant burning it to prevent its falling into 
imperialist hands. This decides the wavering electors. Gardiner, 130 
sqq., Tattle's Prussia, ch. iv. 

2 The greatest crisis of the 17th century [Gindely II, 419]. Turning- 
point was the diet of Regensburg, 1630, where Maximilian, acting for the 
League, succeeded in getting Waldstein dismissed and in preventing the 
election of the emperor's son as king of the Romans [Ch. V, § 9, n, 2]. 
Richelieu's hand was in all this. Eggenberg, Ferdinand's minister, urged 
conciliation of Saxony and Brandenburg at all hazards, but Jesuit influ- 
ence was against this. See Fagniez \_Rev. hist., Jan. -Feb., 1885], Pere 
Joseph a la diete de Ratisbon^ 1630. Even Breitenfeld did not change a 
whit the Jesuits' determination to carry through the edict everywhere. 

3 He created a fleet to harass Spain, treated with Holland, Switzerland, 
Mantua and Parma in the same interest, and planned to stir up revolts in 
Portugal and Catalonia. 

4 Besides the Swedish king himself, Richelieu, Mazarin, Oxenstierna, 
and the generals Waldstein [§ 13, n. 3], Tilly, Bernhard, Mansfield, Tors- 
tenson, Wrangel, Guebriant, Baner, Horn, Conde and Turenne. Gardiner 
depreciates Conde, idolizes Turenne. 

^ The papal nuncio who superintended the re-conversion of Bohemia 
and the Palatinate. For the greatness and deeds of Gustavus Adolphus 
we must refer to the numberless lives and accounts of him. The best are 
named in the bibliog. Hausser, II, 152 sqq„ is a good brief discussion of 
the man, his character, career, tactics, etc. Cf. Gindely, II, Appendix. 
Grotius's de iure belli ac pads appeared in 1625 and Gustavus was wont 
to carry it with him and sleep with it for pillow. On his use of artillery, 
* Artillery,' in Encyc. Brit. 

§ 16 The Swedish Phases 

Gardiner, ch. viii, ix. Gindely, II, iii-ix, xi. Hausser, pt. ix. 7"wi?^/^, Prussia, 
ch. iv. Hurter, Wallenstein^ s 4 letzte Lebensjahre. 

I The instant the two northern electors, so dilatory, 
join him, Gustavus rushes against Tilly, whom he 
totally defeats at Breitenfeld, the ' Naseby of Germany,' 
163 1. Then, while the Saxons march on Vienna, he 
sweeps Franconia, the Palatinate and the great ecclesi- 
astical princedoms,^ and having separated Spaniards 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 333 

from imperialists, returns against the latter, opens 
Bavaria by seizing Donauworth, forces the Lech in a 
battle 2 where the great Tilly is mortally wounded, and 
enters Munich in April, 1632. Ferdinand, trembling 
in expectation of the Swedes and Saxons at Vienna, 
restores Waldstein, making him virtually dictator of the 
empire. Hastily collecting an army Waldstein chases 
the Saxons from Bohemia, then volts to strike Gustavus. 
The two terrible chiefs face each other six weeks at 
Niirnberg, when Waldstein retreats to Saxony, the 
Swede close behind. In the battle of Liitzen, 1632, 
Giistavtis AdolpJms falls ^ Pappenheim too, Waldstein's 
foremost lieutenant, yet victory declares for the Swedes, 
commanded by Bernhard of Weimar. 2 Dissensions 
between the Swedes and the Germans* render the vic- 
tory useless and the imperialists assume the offensive. 
The Swedish Chancellor Oxenstierna, now the political 
head of the protestants, is disliked by Bernhard, the 
greatest remaining general. Notwithstanding the loss 
of Waldstein,^ whom through well-grounded jealousy 
Ferdinand lets be assassinated, the imperialists win the 
terrible battle of Nordlingen,^ 1634, which divides the 
Swedes, discourages the Germans and reinstates the 
catholics in all the South. The Peace of Prag,^ 1635, 
gives up the Edict of Restitution though only for the 
Lutherans and in the North, reconciles Saxony and 
Brandenburg to the emperor and turns them against 
the Swedes. The protestants are now again disunited 
and without heart, their cause once more at nadir. At 
this point the war quite loses its confessional and 
religious character and is henceforth political, a mere 



334 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

continuation of the eternal feud between France and 
Austria. 

1 Called ' Priests' Lane,' including Wiirzburg, Bamberg, Fulda, Cologne, 
Trier, Mainz, Worms, Speyer. 

2 It was at Rain, where the Lech joins the Danube. Tilly was 73 
years old. 

3 His last words, * the world for others,' For this battle, Gardiner, ch. 
viii, sec. 6. See also in Herm. Merivale's Historical Studies, II. Wald- 
stein had about 18,000 men to Gustavus's 20,000. 

* On this phase of the war, Droysen, Bernhard von Weimar, passim. 
In 1633 Sweden formed the League of Heilbronn with the circles of 
Swabia, Franconia, Upper and Lower Rhine. Hausser, II, 208, Gardi- 
ner, 167. 

5 On Waldstein, besides the works named in the bibliog., see Gardiner, 
ch. ix; Winter, in Nord jc. Sud, Mch., 1883, on W.'s Fall; Hausser, II, 
213. As to his guilt, see Gindely, Int. Old writers think him a traitor. 
So Schiller, although he could wish that the proofs were stronger. Forster 
accounts him innocent, unless just at the end when he thought the em- 
peror about to remove him. Dr. Hallwich, the most voluminous writer 
on the subject, holds the same view. Dr. Schebeck clears him entirely. 
Ranke thinks him technically guilty, yet honest in his effort to bring catho- 
lics and protestants together, Gindely is impressed that the great leader 
was guilty, but bids us wait till he has published his material. 

^ Gardiner, ch. ix, sec. 5, Droysen, Bernhard v. IVeimar, bk. iv. The 
killed amounted to 12,000, prisoners, among them General Horn, to 6000. 
The emperor's son, Ferdinand, subsequently Ferdinand III, commanded 
the imperialists. Defeated, the protestant army divided, Bernhard retreat- 
ing to the Rhine, the Swedes to Pomerania. 

'^ This renewed the status quo of 1627, thus saving to protestantism 
most of the northern bishoprics but leaving Halberstadt, the Palatinate 
and the lands included in the League of Heilbronn [n, 4] in catholic 
hands, Brandenburg, coolly and nominally Calvinistic, was to be treated 
as Lutheran. 



the thirty years war 335 

§ 17 The Peace of Westphalia 

Gardiner, chaps, x, xi. Gindely, II, x. Bryce, xix. Perkins, as in bibliog. Ranke, 
Civil W. and Monarchy in Fr., vol. i. Tuttle, Prussia, ch. iv. 

The remainder of the war, its French phase,^ is replete 
with interest but as poHtical less within our theme. 
Richelieu's policy, fully successful, was in general to 
humble Hapsburg, in particular to extend France to the 
Rhine and obstruct Spain's road ^ to the Netherlands. 
As means to these ends he would (i) outwit Oxen- 
stierna, the able guardian of Sweden's interests, (2) 
support and use the great German and Swedish war- 
riors, yet (3) prevent any of these from becoming so 
powerful as to crush the emperor or oppose France. 
Both parties seeing themselves becoming mere tools for 
building France, thought of peace. With this motive 
wrought the indescribable poverty and distress of every 
kind induced by the war.^ The ecclesiastical provisions 
of the Peace (i) confirmed the agreement of Augsburg 
including the cuius regio clause, except that save under 
the Austrian crown alone personal confession and house 
worship were to be free, (2) placed Calvinists on the 
same footing* with the other two confessions, and (3) 
fixed as protestant all principalities and ecclesiastical 
property that had been so on January i, 1624, except 
in the Palatinate, where 161 8 was to be the normal 
year. Its political provisions involved (i) the immense 
enlargement of France,^ (2) indemnity in imperial money 
and territory to Sweden,^ (3) the de itire severance of 
the United Netherlands and Switzerland from the em- 
pire and of the Netherlands also from Spain, (4) the 
extension of several German principalities, mainly at 



336 THE THIRTY YEARS* WAR 

the church's expense, (5) the confirmation to Bavaria 
of the Upper Palatinate with the old electorship, a new, 
eighth, electorship being created for the Lower, (6) 
sovereignty for all Fiirsten, involving the right to con- 
clude treaties with each other and with foreign powers, 
though not against the empire, and (7) the duty of 
France and Sweden as guarantors.'^ 

1 The elector of Trier having placed himself under France's protection, 
his lands are seized by Spain, to aid whom Piccolomini, in 1636, pierces 
Picardy with 18,000 men and threatens Paris, even Richelieu proposing 
to fall back upon the Loire. But the French rally, and with Bernhard's 
aid beat back both Spaniards and imperialists. In 1637 ^^ French fleet 
destroys a Spanish and ravages the coasts of Naples and Sicily. But the 
main victory of this year, the turning-point in this phase of the war, was 
Bernhard's at Rheinfeld, where he captures Worth, the imperialist gen- 
eral, and carries Old Breisach by assault. On his death, soon after, his 
troops come under French pay and command.' In 1640 France wrests 
Artois and Arras from the catholic Netherlands, in '4i-'2 ejects the Span- 
iards from Savoy, invades Catalonia, takes Perpignan and makes Rous- 
sillon French, as it has since remained. Meantime Baner, a second Gus- 
tavus, reenforced from Sweden, sets forth from Pomerania, defeats the 
imperialists at Wittstock in '36, at Chemnitz in '39, penetrates Bohemia 
and with Guebriant's aid takes Regensburg in '41, diet and all, Ferdinand 
III [Ferd. II d. in '37] hardly escaping, Baner dies, but the paralytic, 
Torstenson, surprises Europe by his rapid and brilliant victories at Glogau, 
Schv/eidnitz and Breitenfeld in 1642, as does Guebriant by his at Wolfen- 
biittel in '41 and Kempten in '42. In France, Conde begins his great list 
of victories by defeating the Spaniards at Rocroi in '43, driving them from 
the land, and setting free French troops under Turenne to aid Guebriant 
in So. Germany. Conde and Turenne triumph over Mercy at Freiburg in 
Breisgau, '44, and take Philipsburg, Worms and Mainz, clearing the 
Rhine of imperialists. In this same year '44, Torstenson, who had re- 
treated from Moravia before Gallas, volts, smites Gallas at Juterbogk in 
Brandenburg, another imperial army at Jankowitz, '45, besieges Briinn, 
menaces Vienna, and bids Turenne meet him on the Danube. The latter 
is beaten by Mercy at Marienthal, '45, but with Conde's aid wins, same 
year, the second battle of Nordlingen, after which, uniting with Wrangel, 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 337 

Torstenson's successor, winning victory upon victory, he sweeps Bavaria 
and moves upon Vienna. 

2 Which had always lain through the Rhone and Rhine valleys, in 
Spanish or Austrian hands. 

3 Gindely, vol. ii, ch. xi, Weber, II, 211 sq., Hausser, II, 276 sq. Ger- 
many is said to have lost in this war two-thirds its population. The inhab- 
itants of Augsburg fell from 90,000 to 6000. With many northern towns 
it fared worse still. Dudik computed that the war destroyed 1976 castles, 
1629 towns and 18,310 villages. German manufactures and commerce, 
till now extraordinarily prosperous since the Reformation, this war so 
nearly annihilated that they have never recovered. The Hanseatic League 
[§ 4, n. i] soon embraced LUbeck, Hamburg and Bremen alone, besides 
which only Frankfort and Leipzig had much trade. The roads of com- 
merce were unsafe. Money was scarce. The wealthy had removed to 
other lands, as the Augsburg merchant princes, Fugger and Welser, to 
Antwerp, and when quiet returned business had estabhshed its centres 
abroad. Destruction of property was worse even than that of life. Schiller, 
in Wallenstein's Lager, gives a good picture of the barbarism prevalent in 
the army. Ferdinand III was more inclined to peace with protestants 
than was his father. He had long been ready to concede all that they 
wanted but refused French and Swedish intervention. The Swedish vic- 
tory at Prag [the war ending exactly where it began] decided him. Nego- 
tiations were proposed in 1641, opened in '43. The catholic plenipoten- 
tiaries met at Mlinster, the protestant at Osnabriick, both in Westphalia. 
Encouraged by the war of the Fronde in France Spain refuses to accede 
to this peace till 1657. The other states sign, Oct. 24, 1648, 

* Not strictly, since the emperor, for aught that appeared in the instru- 
ment, must still always be a catholic. Treitschke, p. 9. 

5 See § 19. 

6 5,000,000 Thaler, and the lands about the Oder, Weser and Elbe 
mouths, including hither and most of farther Pomerania, Stettin and its 
district, Riigen, Wismar, and the secularized bishoprics of Bremen and 
"Werden. All these possessions being still in the empire, Sweden was to 
have on their account three voices in the diet. Weber, II, 209 sq. 

' JVas kostet unser Fried'? O, wie viel Zeit und Jahre! 

Was kostet unser Fried'' ? O, wie viel Gratie Haare! 

Was kostet nnser Fried '? O, wie viel Strome Bint! 

Was kostet unser Fried'? O. wie viel Tonneti Gut! 
Ergutzt er auck dafur und lohnt so viel Veroden? 
ya. — Went? Frag'' Echo drum. — Wem meint sie wohl? — 
[Echo:] Den Schweden.' 



338 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

■^ The Westphalia congress was the file leader of all the subsequent 
European congresses. Nothmg really like it had ever occurred before 
since the Amphictyonic Council. It introduced into Europe the general 
political system which still prevails. With it, too, the present great body 
of positive international law began its growth. Grotius had published in 
1622, and the congress as it were enacted his book into an international 
statute. From this congress, further, date stated diplomatic relations, 
legations, embassies, etc., between governments. It is a massive ganglion 
in the nerve-system of history. 



§ 18 Germany after the Peace 

Treitschke, D. Gesch. un XIX yahrh., I, i. Hanser, Deutschland nack dent JO- 
j'dhrigen Kr. Bryce, xix. Gardi7ier, ch. xi. Lewis, chaps, xviii, xix. 

Thus feudalism had ripened its fruit. ^ The emperor 
still invested his vassals in old fashion, sitting and cov- 
ered, still posed as supreme judge. The herald continued 
at coronations to brandish the imperial sword toward 
each of the four winds as a sign that all Christendom 
obeyed the double eagle, to number Lombardy and Tus- 
cany as imperial fiefs, to speak of chancellors for Ger- 
many, Italy and Burgundy, and at diets to summon the 
estates of Nomeny, Bisance and other forgotten lands to 
vote. But these were now the most idle of forms. Unity 
and power gone, the empire was hardly even a confed- 
eracy, no common treasury, no means of coercion. Diet ^ 
was as helpless as emperor, its feeble deeds like his, 
subject to dictation by foreign courts. The individual 
states alone retained energy, which however, they dis- 
played in petty ^ instead of patriotic ways. Few were 
the rulers who did not either ignore or fatally misunder- 
stand public interests. Ministers of Fiirsten took pen- 
sions from abroad. Each of the 329 separate domains 
had its own absolute monarch * with his separate court, 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 339 

army, coinage and taxes. German national feeling died 
out.^ Austria, with which imperial interests and ideas 
were bound up, grew constantly less German as its 
power in and by itself increased. Other non-German 
states, Denmark, Sweden, England, Poland and France, 
were mixed up with imperial affairs. French influence, 
speech and letters displaced Spanish and for long no 
fine literature was composed in German. German his- 
tory from the Peace of Westphalia to the French Rev- 
olution presents barely a single grand character, not 
one noble enterprise. 

1 * In Fiance the feudal head absorbed all the powers of the state and 
left to the aiistocracy only a few privileges, odious indeed but politically 
worthless. In England the mediaeval system expanded into a constitu- 
tional monarchy, where the oligarchy was still strong but the commons 
had won the full recognition of equal civil rights. In Germany everything 
was taken from the sovereign and nothing given to the people' [Bryce]. 
Cf. Chaps. V, § lo, VI, § 20, n. 4. 

2 Full diet mustered 240 votes, of which temporal Fiirsten had loi, 
ecclesiastical 72, free cities 61, counts and Freiherren together 4, the united 
prelates not Fiirsten 2. Members of the diet [aside from the delegates 
of cities] were not necessarily immediate vassals of the emperor though 
most of them held this relation. The Sta^idschaft might belong to a dig- 
nitary possessing no land at all. Till the 17th century the emperor's word 
was enough to invest such a one with it. See Schulte, 312 sq. Many 
free cities now lost their independence and their importance. 

3 This littleness took effect in every department of life and thought. 
The free and creative spirit which ruled literature and theology while 
Luther and Melancthon were on high gave way to dogmatism and servile 
reverence for authority and for the letter which killeth. Orthodoxy be- 
came a greater word than truth. The reaction was an equally irrational 
* rationalism.' Culture went back five centuries. Art perished as if Gen- 
seric or Attila had marched through the land. ' In all ranks life was 
meaner, poorer, harder than it had been at the beginning of the century ' 
[Gardiner]. 

^ The ' estates '-legislatures everywhere renounced function or else dis- 
appeared entirely. About S7>6oo sq. miles of German land belonged to 



340 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

states of which no one embraced more than 2080. Popular wit ridiculed 
the stocking-knitting soldiery of the Cologne state, as well as the grim 
warriors of the bishop of Hildesheim, Avhose hats bore the legend, ' Grant 
peace, O Lord, in our days ' [Treitschke]. 

^ The idea of nationality was linked with that of the empire, now uni- 
versally regarded an Austrian affair, and between Austria and Germany 
proper no sympathy could exist. Yet Austria by its own extraordinary 
power and by the aid of the ecclesiastical principaHties, especially Mainz, 
never found it difficult to retain the hegemony. Frederic the Great boasted 
that he ignored German and could write French as well as Voltaire. 

§ 19 Political Outcome for France 

Freer, Reign of Henry IV. Kitchin, bk. iv. Perkins, and Heeren, as in bibliog. 
Bryce, xix. Lodge, Mod. Europe, ch. xi. 

The Thirty Years' War was as epochal in French as 
in German poHtical history but in a different way. 
While it annihilated German national unity and power 
it cemented the French nation more firmly and made 
France supreme in Europe.^ To France's struggle of 
king with feudalism succeeded that between catholic 
and protestant. The Reformation here, allying itself 
mostly with nobles,^ the learned and the wealthy, never 
became popular as in Germany. Hence, powerful as it 
for a long time was, it was never enough so to triumph. 
Yet it availed to bring a long succession of civil wars, 
with their horrid train of anarchy, poverty and oblivion 
of national interests, evils upon which Spain ^ and Eng- 
land flourished. Efficient relief first came from the 
accession, character and sagacity of Henry IV, who 
through his hold on both parties and by chasing the 
Spaniards from the land, greatly drew the nation 
together. Civil wars ceased, economic prosperity re- 
turned, Henry could meditate a European league^ 
against the Hapsburgs with France its centre. Seiz- 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 34I 

ing, partly creating, this war for opportunity, Richelieu 
took up Henry's plan and work, with the advantage 
that as cardinal he could not be suspected of sympathy 
with protestants, while as aiding their cause abroad he 
could more freely modify those privileges of theirs under 
the Edict of Nantes* which hindered national solidity 
and strength. So through Richelieu's adroitness the 
war yielded France (i) more decided courage, ambition 
and internal consolidation, (2) territory : Pignerol and 
other points in Savoy, full sovereignty ^ over Metz, Toul, 
Verdun, and Alsace Upper and Lower ^ with the ad- 
ministration of the free cities therein, Breisach beyond 
the Rhine and the right to garrison Philipsburg, (3) 
practical preponderance over Austria in the empire 
itself, through its delegation '' in the diet, its guarantor- 
ship of the Peace and its frequent calls to mediate 
between German states. It is thus clear that the power 
at home and in Europe of Louis XIV's monarchy had 
its springs in Henry IV, Richelieu and the Thirty 
Years' War. 

1 So that from this time France instead of Hapsburg was the power 
continually feared as endangering the European balance. Ch. X, § 3. 

2 In France so early as 1561 there were 2000 Huguenot churches. 
Scaliger, Casaubon and the Stephani were protestant scholars. Besides 
Anton, king of Navarre, and his son Henry IV of France, Conde and 
Coligny were among the protestant leaders. Political disaffection would 
often driv^e great men into the protestant ranks, and such infected to some 
extent the whole communion with their restlessness and turbulence. It 
was Richelieu's policy to buy up the Huguenot chiefs with titles and mili- 
tary positions, so as to unite France. 

3 See Baird's Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, James's Henry IV, 
Freer as above, and Motley's works. 

* See § 6, n. 7. 
^ See next §. 



342 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

^ Hitherto, though under French control since in 1552 Henry II seized 
them in the Smalcaldic war [Ch, VIII, § 19], these bishoprics had recog- 
nized the sovereignty of the empire. The emperor had invested their 
Furst-bishops, imperial eagles had been struck at Metz, and cases had 
been appealed from their courts to the imperial chamber. 

"^ How these districts came into Austria's hands, see Ch. VI, § 20, n. 2, 
and Ch. VIII, § 17, last n. The free cities were Hagenau, Kolmar, 
Schlettstadt, Weissenburg, Landau, Kaisersberg, Obernheim, Rossheim, 
Miinster and Thiiringheim. They were still to remain free and to retain 
a relation to the empire, yet not exactly as fiefs [n. 7]. In a word, only 
what was Austria's now passed to France. Strassburg and the district 
just around it remained in the empire till seized, wholly without warrant, 
by Louis XIV in 1681. The duchy of Lorraine, except the now isolated 
French lands of Metz, Toul and Verdun, remained imperial till 1766. On 
this cf. Freeman's Atlas, plates xxvi, xxvii, xxxiii. The Breisach ceded 
was Old Breisach, in southern Baden. Philipsburg was in northern Baden. 

^ Ambassadors rather than members in ordinary. France did not ac- 
knowledge the vassal-relation to the empire for any part of the territory 
now acquired, and the language of § 73 in the Treaty all but cedes full 
sovereignty over the 10 cities as well as over the rest. 



§ 20 Religious Outcome 

Lewis, Bryce, and Gardiner as at § 17. Lane, and Baird as in bibliog. 
All the Histories of Louis XIV and his Times. 

On the other hand the war did much less ^or France 
than for Germany toward solving the great European 
question of the century, how far religious liberty is con- 
sistent with the integrity of states. Since the idea of 
an establishment of religion was then universal, hardly^ 
any one yet conceiving the possibility of a solid govern- 
ment based on confessional neutrality, desire for national 
unity could not but antagonize religious toleration. It 
was felt that innovators in religious belief must of neces- 
sity be traitors. Germany had done the utmost that 
the ideas of the age could brook, in fixing the geograph- 



THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 343 

ical boundaries of the warring faiths, with the right of 
aggressive dissenters to migrate. Within the princi- 
pality even in Germany there was nothing worthy the 
name of rehgious freedom. The Edict of Nantes,^ 
1598, which only enlarged and confirmed Henry Ill's 
agreement of 1576, proceeded upon the same idea as the 
Peaces of Augsburg and Westphalia, not general im- 
munity to religious dissent but protestant independence 
in certain fixed localities. Calvinism, intensely political 
always, scarcely more tolerant than its foe, formed a 
France within France. Such imperia in imperio^ were 
certain not to be permanently tolerated in this land, 
where the spirit of nationality * was so much mightier 
than beyond the Rhine. Not pure cruelty or bigotry 
therefore, but in part ideas of political policy dictated 
those heinous measures of Louis XIV against the 
Huguenots, which culminated in the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, 1685. But by this course, France, 
like Germany though in a different direction, effected 
merely a change of evils, buying political unity at the 
cost of free thought and confession — ultimately the 
disastrous effects were political too, reaching the very 
foundations of the state — while Germany received her 
measure of religious liberty by diminishing her already 
too little political strength and centralization. 

1 John Ernest of Saxe-Weimar was the first German to suggest the 
quieting of the fatherland by proclaiming universal toleration. Elector 
George William of Brandenburg in 1631 expressed the wish that 'at least 
the private exercise of religion ' should be free to all. The turn of the 
phrase indicates that he was meditating more. 1 63 1 was the year of 
Roger Williams's settlement in Salem, the German elector's thought doubt- 
less already stirring in his mind, as in Vane's, and in Lord Baltimore's, 
who wrought it into Maryland's constitution of 1639, Gindely, II, 105 and 



344 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR 

n., also n. 2, below. In Roger Williams the idea took in a few years the 
larger and liner form of an out and out non-confessional state. 

2 By this, nobles possessing high justice [Ch. VI, § i6, n. i] had full 
liberty of worship. So in given cities and places had all citizens, but not 
in episcopal cities, in Paris or within a circle of five miles around, or at the 
king's court. Calvinists could hold public office, even sit in the Parlia- 
ments of Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble and Bordeaux. The edict put in effect, 
so far, the principle of toleration which chancellor I'Hopital, i505-'73, 
had announced, — in vain so far as concerned his time. But men could 
not forget it. It not only blessed France while the edict prevailed but 
outlived the revocation, grew, and inspired the v»'ritings of the 1 8th cen- 
tury and the beneficent acts of the French Revolution. 

^ Huguenots had their own institutions of learning and political assem- 
blies, their towns special protestant garrisons, not of royal troops. They 
were suspected of aiming at entire independence from France. Their 
strength and strongholds were in Languedoc, making catholics fear a new 
Albigensian revolt. 

* This is why the sieges of Rochelle and Stralsund terminated so differ- 
ently, the French city succumbing, the German successfully defying the 
central power. Rochelle made a desperate defence, the inhabitants 
being reduced to a diet of skins and boiled parchments. The aged 
duchess of Rohan lived three months on horseflesh. More than half the 
population died, only 154 men-at-arms remaining. With this city fell the 
Huguenot power. Yet neither Richelieu nor Mazarin thought of revoking 
the edict of Nantes, a criminal blunder reserved for Louis XIV, who had 
Philip II's blood in his veins. * When your Majesty called me to his 
councils I can truly say that the Huguenots divided the state with you. 
The nobles conducted themselves as if they were not subjects, and the 
governors of provinces as if they were independent sovereigns. Foreign 
alliances were despised, private interests preferred to public, and the dig- 
nity of your Majesty so abased that it could hardly be recognized. I 
promised your Majesty to use all my industry and power to ruin the 
Huguenot party, lower the pride of the nobles, lead all subjects to their 
duty and to restore the country's name among foreign nations.' — Riche- 
lieu's Testament politique^ pt, i, ch. i. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER X 

Morris, Fr. Revolution [Ep. of H.: App. to Am. ed. has very fine 
bibliog.]. Ducoudray, Hist, de Fr., et h. coniemporaine.* Student's 
Prance, bk. vii. Adams, Democracy and Mon, in Fr.** Harrison, 
Histories of the Fr. Rev.** [No. Am. Rev., 1883, vol. 137]. v. Sybel, 
Yx. Rev.,* 3 V. Taine, Ancient Regime;** Revolution,** 3 v. Stephens, 
Fr. Rev.,** [i v. out], Blanc, Hist, de la Rev. Fran^aise, 12 v. Thiers, 
do., 10 V. [tr. in 2], Mignet,** do., 2 v. [Bohn, I v. : best single fairly full 
account]. Michelet, do., 9 v. [also in Bohn]; Precis de la Rev. [best 
brief account to Robespierre's d.]. Van Laun, Fr. Revolutionary Epoch,** 
2 V. Burke, Reflections on the Fr. Rev. Lecky, England in the XVIIIth 
Cent. [6 V. out], vol. v. Alison, H. of Europe, First Series, 1789-1815 
[there is an abridge't]. Biedermann, Deutschland im XVIIIten Jahrh. 
[vol. iv, 1882]. Carlyle, Fr. Rev. Smyth, Lect. on do. Hausser, Gesch. 
d. fr. Rev.* Niebuhr, Gesch. d. Zeitallers d. Rev. Lamartine, Giron- 
dists [in Bohn], 3 v. Fyffe, Mod. Europe, de Tocqueville, L'ancien 
regime et la Rev. Kitchin, Fr,, vol. iii. Gardiner, P'r. Rev. [Ep. of 
Mod. H.]. Mill, Observations on the Fr. Rev. [in Dissertations, vol. i]. 
Janet, Philosophie de la Rev. fran^aise. v. Noorden, Eiirop'dische Gesch. 
im XVIIIten Jahrh., 3 v. Schlosser, H. of the XVIIIth Century, etc., 
8 V. Martin, Fr. depuis ijSg jusqii'a nos jours,**, 3 v. Guizot, Civ. 
in Europe, xiv. v. Raumer, Gesch. Frankreichs von. d. fr. Rev.^ 1740- 
'95. Oncken, Zeitalter d. Rev., d. Kaissereichs u. d. Befreiungskriege, I. 
V. Treitschke, Aufsaetze, vol. iii. Laurent, Droit des gens, vols, xiii and 
xiv. Barruel, Memoirs of Jacobinism, 4 v. Croker, Fr. Rev. Baum- 
garten, Gesch. Spaniens, 3 v. Seeley, L. and Times of Stein, 3 V. Tol- 
stoi, War and Peace.** Dickens, Tale of Two Cities. Weir, Hist'l 
Basis of Mod. Europe. 



CHAPTER X 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



The Newest Political History 

Maine, Popular Government. Bancroft, U. S., vol. vi [last ed.], 472 sqq. Contemp. 
Rev., Nov., 1884, 650 sqq. Harrison, zs,'va.\yMxo^. ^ryc^, 435 sqq. 

The political history of the last hundred years betrays 
four leading tendencies : i A constitutional. Abso- 
lutism, which till the American Revolution ^ was univer- 
sal and supreme, has gradually given way, no longer 
existing in any state of first rank. Monarchy has been 
dispensed with by many peoples even as to its form, 
others retain its form only, in the rest its old power 
is gone. Civilized lands are now ruled in unprece- 
dented measure for the people as well as more and more 
by the people. Serfs and slaves ^ have been freed, suf- 
frage enormously extended. 2 A centralizing.^ This 
movement is less general than the above, being mainly 
confined to the United States, Germany and Italy, 
though manifested also in the foreign conquests of 
England, France and Chili, but scarcely less rational or 
beneficial, since modern means of communication im- 
mensely facilitate the unifying of large and widely 
separated bodies of men. 3 A race-national. This, 
which, observe, in some cases antagonizes* the last, 
appears in the new prominence assumed by the element 



348 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of blood-relationship in determining the boundaries of 
states. The nation political inclines more to coincide 
with the nation as thing of race. Here too, next after 
Ireland, Germany and Italy best illustrate, and this not 
only by their recent but also by their prospective his- 
tory. The German empire bids fair in the end to em- 
brace German Austria, as Italy Italian, Elsass-Lothrin- 
gen strives^ to be French again. 4 A non-confes- 
sional.^ Men have been coming to view religion more 
clearly as separable from politics, to see that various 
religious faiths can dwell harmoniously under the same 
constitution. Witness especially France, England and 
America. In Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain the 
idea is equally active, though for various reasons not 
yet so victorious. 

1 Before this event not a constitution in the sense of the word now 
usual, existed. x\t present, only the Czar and the Sultan rule in the old 
fashion, and even they are forced by public opinion local and ecumenical, 
diligently to consult the popular weal, 

2 Of civilized lands only Spanish America and Brazil retain slavery, and 
in both laws exist which are rapidly working its extirpation. Nearly all 
the emancipation edicts and statutes of modern times have been uttered 
since the opening of the French Revolution. Roscher, Pol. Economy, I, 
224. 

^ Including i) the enlargement of the territories ruled from a single 
centre, and ii) the strengthening of the central authorities in nations. 
Steam and telegraphic communication have aided this tendency. Rail- 
ways and telegraphs explain why our generation has witnessed the rise in 
Germany of the first solid central government in all history. But for them 
the United States could not be permanently and strongly ruled as a single 
nation, and the victory of central government in the Civil War would have 
been in vain. 

* Tendency 2 would have maintained Austrian lordship in Italy, keeps 
Elsass-Lothringen German, and urges Austria and Russia to appropriate 
the Balkan peninsula. Tendency 3 has nearly expelled Austria from Italy 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 349 

and promises to do so entirely. Which will prevail over Elsass-Lothringen 
remains to be seen. Of course 2 prompts France to get, as Germany to 
keep, these districts, yet 3 is the force which will recover them to France 
if this ever occurs. Tendency 3 shows itself in new attention to languages. 
Magyar has become the official and literary tongue in Hungary, Tscheck 
is acquiring like dignity in Bohemia, Servian in Servia, Bulgarian in Bul- 
garia and Roumelia, Roumanian in Roumania, Polish in Galicia. 
5 Cf. Ch. IX, § 20. 

§ 2 Importance of the French Revolution 

Morley, Voltaire, also his Rousseau. Taine, Ancient Regime. Sybel, bk. i. 
Harriso7t, as in bibliog. Van Laun, ch. i. 

This new and strongly marked historical period began 
for Europe with the French Revolution, an event 
epochal almost without parallel. Whatever opinion be 
held of its character^ in other respects, no one can 
question the importance of this Revolution in shaping 
political ideas and affairs since. Its significance does 
not lie in the mere facts that France, from a condition 
of abject weakness which made her the scorn of Europe, 
suddenly roused, changed her form of government, and 
in so few years forced a continent to her feet, her em- 
pire surpassing Charlemagne's in size, recalling that of 
Augustus. It resides rather in the irresistible will first 
revealed in all this against monarchical, feudal and 
ecclesiastical oppression and unreason, against a de- 
cayed, inefficient and inexpressibly burdensome public 
system. It was passion for a rational public order, 
educated and developed, in part perversely, by a series of 
able and trenchant French writers,^ and fired to frenzy 
by Bourbon tyranny, stupidity and immoralit3\ that was 
the proximate cause of the brilliant deeds referred to, 
as well as in turn their most lasting and benign result. 



350 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Only from this its central character can the French 
Revolution be justly judged. If it is viewed thus its 
errors and excesses may be explained and partly con- 
doned, as the inevitable friction generated in producing 
a great and worthy piece of work against fearful resis- 
tance. To know the remoter causes of this gigantic 
social upheaval, glance at the condition of society^ in 
France under the dying regime. 

1 Janet, Philos. de la Rev. Fran^aise, Harrison, as above. One hears 
and reads still the most divergent views not only of the Revolution 
but also of its leading characters. Compare, for example, Taine's and 
Stephens's [the two newest writers] view of Marat. Michelet, Morley 
and Blanc are the least compromising defenders of the Revolution, though 
of course criticising much that attended it. Many who inveigh against it 
really accuse only its excesses, horrible indeed. But there are able writers, 
like Taine and Sir Henry Maine, evidently not believing in government 
by the people, who reprobate the Revolution itself, believing that what- 
ever good it may have brought could have been attained without it. For 
a criticism of Taine's position. Rev. historique, Jan.-Feb., 1885, 118 sqq. 
In this hostile mode of viewing the great movement Burke's Reflections 
led the way, swayed too much in their judgment of it as a whole by the 
fate of the unfortunate lady who had so impressed the author when in 
France. 'It is now 16 or 17 years,' he says, 'since I saw the Queen of 
France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on 
this orb, which she scarcely seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I 
saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated 
sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of 
life and splendor and joy. Oh ! what a revolution ! and what an heart 
must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall ! ' 
Similarly Sir James Mackintosh's Vindiciae Gallicae introduced the appre- 
ciative criticism of the Revolution, whose freshest note Frederic Harrison 
has sounded in saying: ' The history of our entire 19th century is precisely 
the history of all the work which the Revolution did leave. The Revolu- 
tion was a creating force even more than it was a destroying force; it was 
an inexhaustil)le source of fertile influences; it not only cleared the ground 
of the old society but it manifested all the elements of the new society. 
Truly we may call the Revolution the crisis of modern reconstruction : — 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 35 1 

" When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared, 
And with that oath which smote air, earth and sea, 
Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free." ' 

2 Those, among others, mentioned in § 8. 

^ The very best brief discussion is Ducoudray, ch. i, drawn in consid- 
erable part from Taine, Ancieii Regime. Read also Taine himself, and 
Buckle, H. of Civ, in Eng., vol. i, chaps, viii-xiv, 



§ 3 Monarchy 

Bancroft, U. S., vol. v, 264 sqq. Morris, i. Came, Louis XIV and L. XV. Philipp- 
son [in Oncken], Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV. Buckle, Civ. in England, ch. xiv. 
Poole, Huguenots of the Dispersion. Kitchin, bks. v and vi. Blatic, bk. ii, ch. vi. 
Michelet, France, vols, xiii-xv. Martin, do., vols, xiv, xv. Burke, Reflections, 
pt. i, § 2. Lodge, Mod. Europe, ch. xiii. 

Though Louis XIV's tyranny in other things must 
at last have brought down his power from the dizzy 
height it attained through his earhest wars,^ it is signifi- 
cant that decline first became pronounced after he had 
revoked the Edict of Nantes, 1685. From this act, 
setting * at naught all the rights consecrated by edicts 
and by the long patience of those protestants whom 
Mazarin had called the faithful flock,' came dire results, 
partly internal, partly external. The reformers by hun- 
dreds of thousands carried ^ into England, Holland and 
Brandenburg their industries, skill, capital and bitter 
resentments. Protestant rulers, indignant, opened their 
doors, feeling themselves insulted, as well as menaced 
in respect to their faith and the stability of their thrones. 
By the next two wars, France, fighting her own sons,^ 
and fatally feeling the swords of William of Orange, 
Marlborough and Prince Eugene, was left 'exhausted, 
gasping, at wits' end for men and money. Absolutism 
had obtained from national pride the last possible exer- 
tions, but had played itself out in the struggle.' So 



352 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

long as Louis XIV lived, such was his personal force, 
such the memory of his deeds, that the monarchy re- 
tained appearance of considerable solidity. Not so in 
Louis XV's reign,^ decadent throughout in conse- 
quence of his vices, impotence and subservience to 
every faction. Depraved women directed the state, to 
foolish alliances and fatal wars. Immense territory^ 
was lost. Frederic the Great laughed at the thought 
that France could effect aught by protesting against 
the partition of Poland.^ At home, nothing was done 
to unify the people, interest them in the government or 
develop national resources, but everything tended 
mightily in the contrary direction. In such ruin was 
France at the accession of the well-meaning Louis 
XVI, ^ that, had this monarch been a second Richelieu 
instead of the cipher he was, his effort to preserve the 
old monarchy must have proved about equally vain. 

1 The first, the war of * devolution,' 1667-8, secured him [Ch. IX, § 3, 
n. 4, end] 12 fortified places on the Belgian frontier, including Lille and 
Tournay. In this Louis was maintaining the claim of his wife as daughter 
of Philip IV of Spain by a first marriage, to inherit against a son by a 
second. The second war, i672-'8, was against Holland, aided by the 
empire; England, Sweden and some German states allying themselves 
with Louis. The ensuing Peace of Nymwegen, 1678, gives Louis nothing 
from Holland, but Franche Comte and 12 new Belgian towns from Spain, 
and Freiburg from the empire. The process of 'reunion' was this. 
French courts decided what the last four Peaces had given France, and the 
king executed the decisions with troops. Under this slim sanction Louis 
seized Strassburg, and occupied Luxemburg, Treves and Lothringen, the 
empire being too weak to oppose. His third war, i688-'97, for alleged 
possessions in the Palatinate, roused all Europe against him, England too, 
under Wm. Ill, its king from 1689, and not only yielded him nothing, but 
cost him the first loss of French territory since Richelieu, viz., Pignerol 
and all the possessions which 'reunion' had taken from the empire. This, 
as King William's W., extended to America. L.'s fourth war, 1701-14, 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 353 

over the Spanish succession, the Queen Anne's W. of American hist., 
weakened France the most fatally. The question was whether the grand- 
son of Louis or the son of Emperor Leopold I should be king of Spain on 
the death of the childless King Charles IL The French prince took pos- 
session. To maintain the European balance of power, i.e. avert the threat 
of union between France and Spain under one crown, England and Holland 
went to war for the Austrian claimant. Twice Louis was ready to make 
peace but the allies proffered too severe terms. Meantime, the Austrian 
candidate having become emperor by the death of his father and older 
brother, the interest of the balance of power favors the French occupant, 
who is confirmed as Philip V of Spain, the coalition against him breaking 
down. But while the P. of Utrecht, 1713, gives Spain to Philip, it con- 
veys the dependencies of Spain : the Netherlands, Milan, Naples and 
Sardinia, to Austria, and ordains that the crowns of Spain and France 
shall never be united, as they never have been. Marlborough and Prince 
Eugene of Savoy were Louis's great military antagonists in this war. 
Blenheim, Ramillies, Malplaquet and Oudenarde the famous battles. 
Von Noorden, Europdische Gesch. iin XVIII Jahrh., Abth. I, is the great 
auth. on this war 

2 Cf. Poole, H. of the Huguenots of the Dispersion. 

3 A regiment of French refugees, led by Schomberg, fought at the 
battle of the Boyne, July i, 1690, against James H, whom Louis XIV's 
troops were supporting. The like occurred on many another field here 
and there in Europe. 

* 1715-1774, the Regency of the Duke of Orleans lasting till 1723. 
L. XV was great-grandson to Louis XIV, the son of an older brother of 
Philip V of Spain [n. i]. Pressed by his minister to attend to affairs of 
the state he would retort, * Bah, the crazy old machine will last out my 
time and my successors must look out for themselves.' * Unhappy man, 
there as thou turnest in dull agony on thy bed of weariness, what a thought 
is thine ! Purgatory and Hellfire, now all too possible, in the prospect : 
in the retrospect, — alas, what thing didst thou do that were not better 
undone? what mortal didst thou generously help? what sorrow hadst thou 
mercy on? Do the 500,000 ghosts who sank shamefully on so many 
battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge 
for an epigram, — crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the 
curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! 
thou hast done evil as thou couldst : thy whole existence seems one 
hideous abortion and mistake of Nature.' — Carlyle. 

^ All French America, by the French and Indian War, 1 756-63, a 



354 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

phase of the 7 Yrs. War in Europe. Ninety-five per cent of France's ter- 
ritory in India also went to England by this war, founding England's 
power in that country. Louis XV had failed in two wars before this one, 
i) i733-'5, to keep his Polish father-in-law, Stanislaus Lesczinski, on the 
Polish throne, ii) the W. over the Austrian succession, i740-'8, in which 
he sided with Karl Albert of Bavaria against Maria Theresa. Cf. Ch. XI, 
§ 6, n. I. 

6 The first of the three partitions, that of 1772, between Russia, Prussia 
and Austria. Russia and Prussia made a new division, 1793, and all three 
powers again in 1795, the last appropriating Poland entire. 

"^ Louis XVI was L. XV's grandson. Louis the Dauphin died before 
his father, leaving several children, of whom Louis XVI, Louis XVIII 
and Charles X became kings. Who was Louis XVII? The young son 
of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, abused to death [1795], at 10 yrs. of 
age by his revolutionary keepers. 

§ 4 Nobility 

Taine, Ancient Regime, bk. i. Sybel, 'der alte Stant 71. 7\e7>. in Fr.' in Kl. hist. 
Schr., vol. iii. Doniol, La Rev. fr. et la feodalite. 

Monarchy in France had thrust feudalism from first 
place but had no wise destroyed it.^ At a hundred 
points it was as oppressive in the eighteenth century 
as ever. Immense estates were the rule. Of the twenty- 
seven million inhabitants of France in 1789, nobility 
comprised but eighty-three thousand, yet one-fifth of 
the land was in their hands. ^ They appointed to all 
offices and emoluments on their domains ; all confis- 
cated property, also all to which owners or heirs were 
wanting, abandoned estates, etc., fell to them. Almost 
as extensively as of old, the lord ozvned the land. Even 
the royal domains encompassed by his, were themselves 
virtually his. Of rivers not navigable, islands, fish, 
wrecks, etc., he v/as sole proprietor. For purposes of 
hunting, even the private enclosures of others, if in his 
jurisdiction, had to be opened at his word. His game 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 355 

could eat vassals' crops with impunity, vassals' grain 
must be ground at his mill, for a toll of one-sixth, one- 
sixth the price of land sold went to him, and so on. 
Besides, large numbers of nobles were heavily pen- 
sioned at public expense. But worst was that neither 
state nor people got the slightest return for all this.^ 
Nobles enjoyed almost total exemption from taxation ; 
as a class they were ignorant and entirely unpatriotic ; 
most, neglecting their lands and local duties, idled away 
their time at court or in town, caring nothing for their 
tenants save to bleed them. Yet, insolent and burden- 
some in equal degree, the more worthless they became 
the more stoutly did they insist on their full feudal 
rights over and against the people. 

1 Ch. VI, § 20. 

2 I.e., 3I- of the population owned | of the land. The clergy and 
nobles had | of all the land, the nobles alone i, the clergy alone -^-^. 

^ V. Sybel, vol. i, 24 sqq., Taine, Ancient Regime, bk. ii. 

§ 5 Clergy 

Sybel, bk. i, ch. i, bk. ii, ch. iii. Taine, Ancient Regime, bk i. Morris, i. 
Ducoudray, 46 sqq. Burke, Reflections, pt. i, § i. 

Though nearly half the soil in France belonged to the 
church, this was but a part of the immense wealth 
wherewith the piety of twelve centuries had endowed 
it. The main income went to seven or eight hundred 
abbots,^ a hundred and thirty-one bishops and arch- 
bishops. These exalted clergymen, mostly from noble 
families, were quite as selfish, useless and tyrannical as 
their relatives not in orders. As a rule each abbot took 
two-thirds the revenue of his foundation, leaving the 
monks to starve upon the rest. Bishops spent their 



356 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

incomes in extravagance if not in rioting, farming their 
lands to heartless agents, who screwed from the hapless 
tenants their uttermost sou. Many a powdered ecclesi- 
astic kept an establishment, which, with its palace, plate 
and equipages, could vie in splendor with Versailles 
itself. The Chateau de Saverne, residence of Cardinal 
de Rohan, Bishop of Strassburg, whose kitchen utensils 
were of sohd silver, had seven hundred beds, a hundred 
and eighty horses were in its stalls.^ Under these 
clerical magnates, so worldly and haughty, crouched the 
great horde of parish priests, living on the scantiest pit- 
tance that would sustain life, and striving, disinterest- 
edly in the main, to minister to the people's spiritual 
welfare. Hardest for these faithful souls was not the 
meagreness of their own support, but the sight of the 
irremediable poverty around them and the necessity 
put upon them by their superiors, whom they dared not 
disobey, of perpetually wringing the mites from their 
already poverty-stricken parishioners.^ 

1 There were also some 280 nunneries. The exact number of these 
religious houses is not known. Not all the abbots were so selfish, some 
sharing their incomes. There were convents occupied by 4 or 5 monks 
each, which enjoyed from 30 to 40 thousand livres apiece yearly [the 
livre = about y^3 a pd. sterling] without bestowing a farthing in charity. 
Ducoudray, 43. 

■^ This gentleman was also abbot of Noirmoutiers and Saint- Waast, and 
pocketed 7 or 8 hundred thousand livres of rent. It was he who was so 
unfortunately involved in the necklace affair with Marie Antoinette. See 
Carlyle's Essay, and Blanc, vol. ii, ch. ii. Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, 
realized 678,000 livres of revenue, i.e., nearly ;^52,I54. Some ecclesias- 
tics fared less sumptuously, and a great part of the iniquity lay in this. 
Cardinal Fleury was at first bishop of Frejus, and so poor that, it is said, 
he used to entitle himself 'bishop by the divine wrath.' 

^ Read Voltaire, *The Country Vicar,' in Dictionnaire philosophitpie. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 35/ 



§ 6 The Third Estate^ 

Dontol, Hist, des classes rurales. Dareste, H. des classes agricoles. TainCy 
Ancient Regime, bk. v. Young, Travels in France, ijSy-'g. 

This comprised the body of the population, including 
what is now sometimes called the 'fourth estate.' The 
moral and financial hope of France lay in the middle 
class, third estate in the narrower sense : lawyers, pro- 
fessors, physicians, business men. Of late, partly 
through John Law's ^ costly demonstration of the power 
of credit, this portion of society had acquired greater 
riches than ever. From plebeian millionnaires almost 
alone could kings and princes borrow. As France's 
best financiers, also out of interest in the state, heavily 
their debtor, these men became students of politics and, 
so far as permitted, active therein. Outdoing the 
nobility in culture and intelligence as well as in ready 
wealth, always in requisition for those public tasks 
which required special training, skill and versatility, 
they naturally chafed under the discriminations, social 
and in respect to political power and burdens, made 
against them. 'What,' asked Sieyes,^ *is the third 
estate t Everything. What has it been till now ? 
Nothing. What does it ask for } To become some- 
thing.' But the poor fourth estate had the most to 
complain of. Nine-tenths of the population possessed 
no property, in some provinces even serfdom lingered 
yet. The poverty of all was terrible. Oats, buckwheat, 
bran, formed the entire diet of many thousands, in 
mountainous parts whole communities lived on chest- 
nuts, while pork and goat-flesh were rare delicacies, to be 



358 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

tasted by the most favored perhaps at Christmas. 
Houses were thatched and without windows, floors of 
earth. Multitudes went barefoot in midwinter. Bread 
riots were continual. Frequent famines filled cities 
with beggars: in 1753 over eight hundred died of cold 
and hunger in Paris alone.* Intellectually the masses 
fared no better, ignorant parish priests being their sole 
instructors. 

1 The French Revolution was the victory of the third estate. Cf. Ch. 
VI, § 1 6, and the lit. there named, esp. Guizot and Blanc. 

2 A Scotchman who secured permission of the Regent in 1 716 to open 
his Royal Bank of France, and to issue paper money to ten times the 
amount of the public debt. The Bank had a Hvely discounting business, 
the monopoly of tobacco and of the Louisiana trade [succeeding to the 
Mississippi Co.], the rights of the old East India Co. and the handling of 
all national taxes. Shares were in enormous demand, rising from the par, 
;^5(X), to ;^i 8,000 apiece. The notes were better than gold, and their 
abundance, raising prices, diffused everywhere the appearance of pros- 
perity. Failure came of course, the ' Mississippi Bubble,' as it was 
called, bursting, but this abuse of credit taught France a good lesson touch- 
ing its use. Lalor's Cyclopaedia, vol. i, 230, ii, 737, Blanc, vol. i, bk. ii, 
ch. vii. 

3 In his famous pamphlet on the Third Estate. It did for the Fr. 
Revolution what Tom Paine's Common Sense did for the American. 

* And the nobility, how unfeeling ! Duchess de Polignac was amazed 
that people were so clamorous for bread when nice cakes were to be had 
for four sous each. 

§ 7 Economics 

Sybel, bk. ii, ch. iii. Blanc, vol. iii, ch. i. Young, as at § 6. 

The above evils were largely referrible to an alto- 
gether vicious and irrational economic system, public 
and private. The Bourbon kings would hear nothing 
of thrift,^ let public power be shamefully abused for the 
promotion of class interests. i In every department 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 359 

of the State's service offices were sold, numberless ones 
being created on purpose to be sold. They were often 
made hereditary, often carried with them patents of 
nobility and valuable immunities. 2 The incidence of 
taxes, even apart from the sweeping and unjust exemp- 
tions above noted, was as bad as it could be : still worse 
if possible, the method of collection, viz., the old Roman 
one of farming. 3 Guilds and corporations of the most 
arbitrary and tyrannical sort, created and nourished upon 
the monstrous principle of Henry III, 'the king alone 
can grant the right to labor,' fettered commerce in a 
thousand ways. Abolished by Turgot in 1776, they 
speedily rose anew to a more vigorous power for mis- 
chief than before. 4 All manner of restrictive laws 
upon trade wrought in the same direction. So-called 
protective tariffs were laid, upon domestic imports from 
province to province, as well as upon foreign. Salt^ 
had to be bought of government, at double or treble its 
value, a given amount for a family whether needed or 
not. New inventions, new methods of industry were 
spurned. 5 These and other abuses depressed agri- 
culture the most. One fourth of the arable land in 
France lay untilled, the agricultural system was still 
that of the tenth century. Roads were few and 
wretched. Laws forbade the export of agricultural 
produce. Neither landlord nor tenant was interested 
in maintaining fertility of soil. The whole policy of 
government toward the rural population was such as to 
discourage industry and economy. Taxes were of about 
every conceivable nature, collected with a greed as of 
harpies. Trifles like door-latches were attached by tax- 



360 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

agents, and mites seized that had been gotten by beg- 
ging. The peasant with bread must eat it in secret or 
be additionally taxed as getting too rich. 

1 See Ad. Vintry, in Rev. d. deux Motides, Dec, 1 883, 748 sqq., 
Stephens, II, xii. To build the water-works for Versailles 20,0(X) men 
toiled 2 years. During the 5 peaceful years after the war with Holland 
the grand nionarque increased his annual public expenses 545 million 
livres, while the annual net income was only 463 million, adding to the 
debt 82 million yearly. This deficit went on swelling. Cf. § 9, also Blanc, 
vol. i, bk. iii, ch. iii. v. Sybel, vol. i, 30 sqq., emphasizes a topic often 
overlooked, the ecojiomic benefits flowing to France from the Revolution. 

2 This salt burden was called the gabelle. At least 7 lbs. of salt per per- 
son a year must be bought, besides extra for any general purpose, as cur- 
ing meat. Prices of salt varied with provinces, from 8 to 32 shillings a 
lb. Smuggling was universal. There were 10,000 culprits yearly for 
infraction of the gabelle, 500 hung and 500 sent to the galleys. Cf. Van 
Laun, I, 31 sq. ' In Normandy one could each day see wretches who 
had no bread, seized, sold, and executed for not buying salt.' — Ducoudray. 

§ 8 Thought 

Taine, Ancient Regime, bks. iii, iv. Morley, Voltaire, also his Rousseau. Grimm [in 
essays], ' Fr. and Voltaire,' ' V. and Frederic Great.' Blanc, vol. i, bk. iii, chaps, i, 
ii, vol. iii, ch. ii. Martin^ as at § 3. Rousseau, Contr&t social [vol. 10 of Wks. in 
Eng.]. 

Protestantism was still illegal in France, the church 
outwardly one. Yet a most vigorous spirit of protest 
everywhere prevailed, against whatever stood upon mere 
authority or tradition, partly religious, caused, among 
much else, by the manifest failure of Christianity, as 
the church administered it, to liberate men's souls or 
purify their lives, and partly intellectual, a stronger love 
for nature, science, the present life, than the church 
approved. Revelation was discarded, reason declared 
the supreme guide. Along with these ideas went a new, 
more liberal mode of political thinking, proceeding from 



I 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 361 

the great writings of Montesquieu/ admirer of the Eng- 
lish constitution. Also France was now reaping the 
fruit of that still more negative bent of thought intro- 
duced by Locke's 2 philosophy, from the first ardently 
studied here, with especial attention to its materialistic 
bearings. Condillac set aside reflection as a source of 
ideas, Helvetius^ reduced virtue to egoistic hedonism. 
La Mettrie and Maupertius, the latter in the famous 
Systeme de la 7iatiire^ advanced a materialism coarser 
yet, decrying belief in God, freedom and a soul sepa- 
rable from the body, as baseless and mischievous 
vagaries. Voltaire's unbelief, deism,* and at first Dide- 
rot's, was more moderate, yet the Encyclopedic,^ their 
organ, seemed to reason away ' law from the state, free- 
dom from morality, spirit and God from nature.' ^ But 
the philosopheme most influential now, this too in part 
a heritage from Locke, partly also from Hobbes though 
originally from the Stoicism incarnate in the Roman 
law, was the conception of a 'law of nature.' It domi- 
nated Rousseau's writings. The ideas of a state of 
human nature^ anterior to society, of society as a con- 
tract, and of the natural rights of man, were phases of it. 
The new economic doctrine of Physiocracy^ it permeated 
completely. Embodying deep and inspiring truth ^ it 
blinded men to its radical falsity. And even the good 
thinking of the period was too abstract and aprioi^iy 
morbidly reliant on formulae, theories and * victorious 
analysis.' ^^ 

1 The years of the declining monarchy were rich years for thought in 
all spheres. Montesquieu, 1689-1755, in his Spirit of the Laws, weighs 
the advantages of all the different forms of government, with the view of 
displaying the superiority of constitutionalism. The work greatly influ- 



362 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

enced Mirabeau and all the moderates of the Revolution. For the inf. of 
English thought on French, see Buckle, Civ. in Eng., vol. i, ch. xii. 

2 From the fundamental Lockian principle, nihil est in intellectu quod 
non flier it in. seusu, Condillac, i7i5-'8o, logically and correctly deduced 
pure sensationalism in philosophy, causally deriving our intellectual powers 
and stores, in a word, our entire inner life, from sense-activity. Locke's 
English pupils have sought to deny the legitimacy of this deduction, but 
without success. Plainly, however, Locke did not himself see this mate- 
rialistic implication of his theory, failing to distinguish clearly between 
sense as the cause of knowledge and sense as the occasion or condition of 
knowledge. Leibnitz's Nouveaux Essais and esp. Kant's Critique of the 
Pure Reason correct Locke at this point, demonstrating the total power- 
lessness of sense to give aught more than the crude matter of knowledge, 
whose form, or character as knowledge, proceeds entirely from the action 
of mind. 

3 Helvetius, 1715-71, followed the thought of Condillac into its ethical 
bearings, making virtue to consist solely in pleasure, in such conduct as 
shall yield to the individual subject in question the utmost satisfaction [not 
necessarily low gratification]. 

^ The doctrine which admits a personal First Cause but denies revela- 
tion and miracle. 

^ In 28 vols., prepared on purpose to discuss all the great matters of 
human interest in the light of the new ideas. Diderot, i7i2-'83, was 
editor-in-chief. He revised all the articles and wrote many. D'Alembert, 
i7i7-'83, the great mathematician and physicist, was the next most im- 
portant contributor. Voltaire, Rousseau, Grimm, Dumarsais, d'Holbach 
and Jancourt each wrote more or less. 

6 Yet the negative and destructive in this tendency stopped far short 
of what might have been predicted from the execrable abuses prevalent in 
both state and church, conditions which should temper our judgment even 
of such then existing skepticism as we cannot after all excuse. Two par- 
ties urged ideas which were visionary indeed, yet in a sense constructive : 
i) The Physiocrats, wishing in whatever efficient mode, to free the indi- 
vidual from the terrible tyrannies and limitations besetting him. ii) The 
Socialists, intent more on mere change of rulers, government by the peo- 
ple. Voltaire spoke for those, Rousseau and his disciple Robespierre for 
these. 

"^ Hobbes's Leviathan is the classic for this doctrine, a doctrine which 
appears also in Locke, and in some form in all the political philosophiz- 
ing of the 17th and i8th centuries. It inspired the English Revolution 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 363 

of 1688 and the American Revolution, as it did the French. Even Burke 
uses it while in eftect seeking to refute it. 

8 For this, see ' Physiocrates ' in Lalor's Cyclopaedia, and Blanqui, H. 
of Pol. Economy. 

9 There is a sound sense in which one may speak of a ' state of nature ' 
and of man's ' natural rights,' viz., that which makes these expressions 
synonymous respectively with ' rational condition ' and ' liberties accordant 
with the general good.' However convenient in popular exposition some- 
times to contrast nature and culture [or civilization], the two are in no 
wise antagonistic, the truly cultivated man being even more than the 
savage in a state of nature. Cf. Maine, Anc. Law, iv, Voltaire, 'La loi 
nattirelle'' [^Oeuvres vol. xii], ^Droits des homines'' [^Dict. philos, Oeuvres 
xxix], ^Nature'' [ib. xlii]. 

1*^ Carlyle's favorite phrase for this pedantry or * philosophism.' 



\ 



§ 9 Approach of Crisis 

Carlyle, vol. i. Stephens, I, iii, xii. Hervt. Merivale, in Hist'l studies, 
* Precursors of the Fr. Rev.' Blanc, vol. ii. 

Several influences more specific than the above were 
at work in various ways toward a revolutionary result. 
I Frequent issue of lettres de cachet} by which persons 
obnoxious to the king were imprisoned in the Bastille 
without trial. 2 Increasing use of lits de justice? 
whereby the king nullified the ^«(3:5-/-legislative power 
of the Parliament of Paris to 'enregister' or to refuse 
enregistry. 3 Fickleness and general weakness of 
Louis XVI, who, sincerely desiring reform and the 
people's good, through lack of firmness and of a policy 
lent ear now to one party, now to another. 4 Distrust 
and dislike of Marie Antionette as Austrian and as sus- 
pected of using her influence in France to the advan- 
tage of Austria. 5 Hunger and enforced idleness,^ 
rendering the populace, especially in Paris, desperate, 
and open to the plots of demagogues like the Duke of 



364 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Orleans. 6 Successful revolution in America,* which 
the French had aided, bringing back much of its spirit. 
7 Frightful public debt and increase of yearly deficit, 
financial trouble^ that reached back to Louis XIV's 
extravagance and costly wars. After the American 
campaign the arrears equalled nearly half the yearly 
revenue. In 1787 a deficit of 198 million francs, credit 
being exhausted, placed the state at the verge of bank- 
ruptcy. Various schemes of reform had been moved, 
the most radical among them being that of Turgot, 
Louis XVI's earliest and greatest minister. He intro- 
duced free trade, better modes of raising taxes, and a 
broader participation in political rights. Opposition 
was instant, fierce, universal, and after an administra- 
tion of about eighteen months, Turgot was dismissed, a 
martyr to the ancieti regime^ nearly all his innovations 
collapsing at once. Necker, less radical, brought to the 
government credit rather than real financial betterment, 
yet introduced enough of Turgot's policy to invoke 
upon himself Turgot's fate. Calonne began with prodi- 
gality, struck perforce into the path of his predecessors 
and fell like them. 

1 Sealed warrants of arrest, proof against all habeas corpus proceed- 
ings. It is said that one keeper had received 50,000 of these. Under 
Louis XIV and L. XV the Bastille was crowded [§ 11, n. i]. See 
' Cachet, Lettres de,^ in Lalor's Cyclopaedia. The famous man in the iron 
mask was among these state prisoners, — probably [yet no one knows] 
count Ercolo Matthioli, of Mantua, who had deceived Louis XIV in a 
secret treaty. He died after 24 years of imprisonment, Louis commanding 
his face to be mangled that his identity might never be made out. 

2 Bastard d'Estang, Parlements de France, I, xii, also, same topic, 
Voltaire, Oeuvres, xlii. Cf. ante, Ch. VI, § 18, n. 4, and Ducoudray, 22 
sqq. On the abasement of this Parliament now, v. Sybel, vol, i, 508. 

^ See § 6, also Taine, Revolution, bk. i. The duke of Orleans was the 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 365 

father of Louis Philippe, who was made king of the French in 1 830. He 
was Louis XVLs cousin, ahhough voting in the Convention for the 
latter's execution. lie was also a bitter enemy to Marie Antoinette. His 
nickname, Philip Egalite, was from liis incessant protestation of regard 
for equality. Spite of this the Convention suspected him of aiming at the 
crown, imprisoned him April 8, 1793, and guillotined him the next Novem- 
ber. His nature was weak, and schemers used him in working their ends. 
He is believed to have instigated the mob of Oct. 5, 6, 1789, to leave 
Paris and attack the Versailles palace. Stephens, I, vii. Mirabeau and 
Lafayette have been charged with this, but unjustly. 

^ Rosenthal, America and France, Bancroft, U. S., vol. vi, 32 sqq. 
This tremendous influence of America was exerted by the common sol- 
diery, military and naval officers like Lafayette and Rochambeau, travellers 
like Chastellux, Brissot de Warville, Mazzei, and most of all by the Ameri- 
can thinkers, Barlow, Paine, Jefferson and Franklin. Franklin impressed 
his ideas upon all classes, learned and common people, the sober and 
the frivolous alike. The quaintness of his dress and manners, his sagacity 
and good sense, his calm firmness and high principles evoked universal 
admiration. Everything became a la Franklin : snuff-boxes, stoves, 
dishes, ornaments, furniture. Franklin's portrait was in every house. 
Pres. A. D. White summarizes the American influences as i) familiarity 
with the notion of revolution, ii) impartation of strength to French ideas 
of liberty, iii) practical shape given to the conception of equality, iv) prac- 
tical combination of liberty and equality into republican and democratic 
institutions, and v) an ideal of republican manhood [Washington, Frank- 
lin]. ' Borne over the Atlantic to the closing ear of Louis [XV], King by 
the grace of God, what sounds are these; mufiled-ominous, new in our 
centuries? Boston Harbour is black with unexpected tea; behold a 
Pennsylvania Congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill, Democracy 
announcing, in rifle volleys death-winged, under her Star Banner, to the 
tune of Yankee-doodle-doo, that she is born, and, whirlwind-like, will 
envelope the whole world.' — Carlyle. 

^ Blanc, vol, ii, ch. v, Lalor's Cyclopaedia, vol. ii, 737, Ducoudray, ii. 
Turgot, who, Malesherbes said, 'had Bacon's head and I'Hopital's heart,' 
like so many other reformers, too little considered how slowly genuine 
reforms have to move. Adam Smith often met Turgot and learned much 
from him. Turgot proposed abolition of exemptions, a land tax, and the 
general application of physiocratic ideas [' Physiocrates ' in Lalor]. The 
queen was the bitterest foe to all retrenchment : she did not wish Louis 
to ' play the bourgeois^ as economizing was styled. 



366 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



§ 10 States-General and Constituent Assembly 

Taz'w?, Rev., bk. ii. Sie/Aens, l,i,ii. Morris, ii. Duco7idray,'\\,'\\\. Aubrey-Vitet, 
Etats-generajix avant lySQ, z« Rev. d. d. Mondes, Jan., 1883. Michelet, Precis, 
ch. i. Blanc, vol. ii, chaps, vi-viii, vol. iii, chaps, iii, iv. 

The Parliament of Paris, declining to enregister edicts 
for a stamp tax and equality of impost, appealed in 1787 
to ' the Nation, represented by the States-General,' as 
alone competent to grant the king the extraordinary 
subsidies now needed to save the state. Herein the 
magistrates voiced a feeling, little definite, still strong 
and universal in France, that this ancient assembly, 
hailing from the days of Philip the Fair, and formerly ^ 
wont to be convoked at every specially critical turn in 
national affairs, was the sole power on earth able to 
cure the land's appalling ills. Necker, recalled in 1788, 
finding the treasury totally empty, fell in with this con- 
viction and among his first acts induced the king to 
decree a session of the states-general to convene early 
in 1789. Each province was to forward with its depu- 
ties a list'of complaints and instructions. France rung 
with discussions of abuses and of plans for remedy. 
Men felt that the era of popular liberty was dawning. 
Two capital questions were the most hotly debated, 
whether the third estate should have double represen- 
tation, and whether voting should be by estates or by 
heads. The former Louis decided affirmatively,^ the 
latter, left to the assembly itself, occupied and dis- 
tracted all the earlier sittings, nobles and clergy insist- 
ing upon voting by estates.^ This scheme, which would 
have insured perpetuity to all the old abuses, the third 
nobly resisted. Their first decisive step, the inaugural 



■ THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 36/ 

act of the French Revolution, came on June 17, when, 
nobles and most clergy obstinate, king fickle as ever, 
they, arrogating supremacy in the state to their con- 
stituency, the people,^ declared themselves the National 
Assembly, calling upon the other estates to join them. 
These were soon forced to yield. In this triumph 
Sieyes led, his more radical, democratic, ideas now 
steadily gaining in ascendancy over the tremendous 
influence ^ and more conservative, royalist liberalism of 
of Mirabeau. The Assembly assumed the title 'Con- 
stituent,' taking oath not to separate till France had 
a constitution. The king's command to disperse, to 
return to action by estates, though coupled with largest 
concessions on other points, was heard unheeded, Mira- 
beau replying : 'We shall yield only to bayonets.' 

1 The last previous meeting had been in 1614, in the reign of Louis 
XIII. Richelieu was then a member. On the various states-general 
assemblies that had been held, Thierry, Tiers Etat, vol. i, also, vol. ii, 
Appendix ii. On the Parliament of Paris now, Ducoudray, 23. 

2 Which of course amounted to nothing unless the other were settled 
so as to make numbers count. It was like the king to be decided when 
this would cost him nothing, shirking when decision required sacrifice. 

^ There were 1145 deputies in all: 270 nobles, 291 clergymen, 584 
from the third estate. Had voting by estates prevailed, the delegates of 
the third would have been powerless except in debate, and this would 
have amounted to little upon any serious issue. 

* Thus recurring to the most ancient constitution of the Frankish state. 
See Ch. IV, §§ 9, 10. Except the Declaration of American Independence 
it was the most decisive political step ever taken by any body of men. 

^ Decrue, Les idees politiques cie Mirabeau, Rev. historiqtie, XXII and 
XXIII. Cf. Stephens, vol. i, chaps, xi, xiv. Mirabeau was the colossus 
of those reformers who believed in a constitutional monarchy. He is 
Mr. Stephens's hero of the opening revolution, * the one man who showed 
himself a statesman.' Mirabeau was also a majestic orator and an able 
financier. But Sieyes was more bold, aggressive, crafty. From Necker, 
Stephens strips most of his glory as a statesman, but justly. 



368 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



§ II Revolution Begun 

Tame, Rev., bk. i. Sybel, bk. i, ch. ii. Cherest, Chute de Vancie?i regime, ijSy-'g. 
Stephetis, I, v, Michelei, Precis, ch. ii. Carlyle, vol. i, bks. v-vii. 

On the king's reactionary dismissal of Necker, July 
II, and his call of Breteuil, steps intended to overawe 
the Assembly and the demagogues at Paris, the im- 
measurable slumbering hatred against privileged classes 
all instantly burst forth. In Paris the mob swept every- 
thing before it. The army, even the royal guard, refuses 
to attack the people, the national guard proves little 
more efficient. The mob captures and destroys the 
Bastille,^ July 14. The king succumbs and will recall 
Necker. Influenced by La Fayette and Bailly, who 
wished to defeat the Duke of Orleans's purpose to 
make himself king, Louis appears in Paris to express 
to the people his acquiescence in the Assembly and in 
reform. The government now passes to the Assembly. 
Order could not be created at once. 'The revolt in 
Paris had produced a general explosion through the 
whole of P'rance, by which, in a few days, the old 
political system was destroyed forever. In all the 
provinces without one exception, the estates, the local 
magistrates, the civic corporations, the peasants and 
the proletaries rose in arms. Royal intendants were 
nowhere to be seen, the parliaments wished to be 
altogether forgotten, the old courts of law vanished 
without leaving a trace.' Civic guards were every- 
where formed to repress riot, armed from royal maga- 
zines. In Caen salt-tax offices were gutted, collectors 
barely spared. Similar deeds occurred in every prov- 



I 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 369 

ince. Custom-houses were razed, nobles and unpopular 
ollicers of government hung, castles burned, monas- 
teries pillaged, all reminders of the old system expunged. 
The Assembly, regarding it the sole road to order, 
hastened to do away with obnoxious institutions by law, 
in which work the liberal minority of nobles was honor- 
ably forward. 'Serfdom, feudal jurisdiction, manorial 
ground-rents, tithes, game laws, saleable offices, fees, 
clerical robing dues, municipal and provincial privileges, 
privileges of rank, exemptions from taxes, plurality of 
offices and livings — all were swept away in breathless 
haste in one night.' 

1 A prison, built during Charles V's reign, 1^64-80, and enlarged by 
his successor. Prisoners were usually not ordinary felons, but men of 
mark whom some person in power wished to be rid of, victims of court 
intrigue or of feuds in high families. They were lodged here by lettres de 
cachet [§ 9, n. i], which were sometimes bought from the king's minister 
with money. 

§ 12 The Constitution 

Stephens, I, ix, x. Mzchelet, Precis, chaps, iii, iv. Morris, iii. Taine, Revolution, 
bk. ii, ch. iii. Burke, Reflections, pt. ii. 

The programme for this was the Assembly's famous 
Declaration of the Rights of Man, proclaiming the 
sovereignty of the people, the admissibility of all citi- 
zens to public employments without distinction of birth 
or faith, the freedom of worship, work and the press, 
the equality of all citizens before the law and in respect 
to taxation, the absolute authority of the law as the 
expression of the general will, the protection by it of 
each citizen's liberty, property and rights, and the full 
responsibility of the executive power. The constitution 



r 



370 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

proceeded to reconstruct fundamentally the entire pub- 
lic system of France in accord with these sentiments of 
'liberty, equality, fraternity.' By the provisions of this 
instrument, the old historic provinces of France yielded 
to departments,^ these subdividing into districts, these 
into rural cantons and municipalities or communes. 
Suffrage was not universal but limited to 'active citi- 
zens,' such as paid a tax at least equal to three days' 
labor. Voters were to elect electors, who should choose 
deputies to the Assembly, heads of departments, dis- 
tricts and cantons,^ judges, even bishops and priests. 
The judicial system was also reformed and juries intro- 
duced for criminal cases. ^ The Assembly was made 
monacameral and given sole initiative, its 745 members 
to be renewed by biennial elections. Civil marriage 
was ordained, also the free exercise of religion for prot- 
estants and Jews, as well as equality of these with 
others in all civil privileges. The lands of the church 
were sold,* a ' civil constitution of the clergy ' ^ enacted, 
monastic vows and most ecclesiastical orders done away. 
These ecclesiastical innovations, cursed by the pope, 
evoked from the clergy obstinate opposition, the first 
decided check which the Revolution had encountered, 
greater even than was occasioned by the accompanying 
abolition of nobility. Most rem.arkable, under this new 
constitution the king became the mere instrument of 
the people's sovereignty, the executor of the Assembly's 
edicts, his influence in legislation about null, limited to 
a suspensive veto for two Assemblies.^ The system 
had place for a king but no need of one. 

1 83 departments, 574 districts, 4730 cantons. Venaissin, added to 
France in 1791, funned the 84th department, that of Vaucluse [about 






THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 3/1 

Avignon]. The departments of the Rhone and the Loire, separated 
later, then formed but one. That of Tarn-et-Garonne was created in 1808, 
making 86. The annexation of Nice and of Savoy in 1859 raised the 
number to 89, the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871 reduced it to 86 again. 
Division into departments had been thought of before for the provincial 
assemblies, and Ile-de-France had been divided, into 12 departments, 
smaller of course than those of 1 790. This departmental division is found 
also in most of the regulations of 1787 for the organization of provinces, 
and the name everywhere serves to designate a fraction intermediate be- 
tween the province and the electoral district. The name arrondissonent 
[at present applied to the district] appears also at the same epoch as des- 
ignating a subdivision of the department. Ducoudray, 107. 

^ But communes were to be governed by councils elected directly by 
the * active citizens,' the primary electors. 

" Though not in civil, where questions of law and questions of fact 
could not be kept apart. There was to be a criminal court for each de- 
partment, a civil for each district, justices of the peace for each canton, 
and a supreme court of appeal or cassation, last resort on questions of 
law. The arrangement to elect judges instead of their appointment by the 
king sprung from wish totally to separate judicial, administrative and 
legislative functions. 

* The assembly ceded the lands to the communes, then issued bonds 
['assignats'] payable by the communes and secured by the lands, selling 
these assignats in open market or directly paying off with them holders of 
the state debt. Assignats were usually in denominations of 100 francs 
[$20] but some were smaller. They bore no interest and were made a 
legal-tender currency. This led to over-issue, and this to depreciation. 
Blanc, bk. xiv, ch. iii. 

^ The new constitution made every department a diocese. The bishops 
were divided into 10 groups, at the head of each of which stood a metro- 
politan bishop. No bishop was to be confirmed by the pope, canonical 
investiture proceeding in each case from the metropolitan. The system 
was quite analogous to that of the Kirk of Scotland. As to ritual and 
doctrine priests who took the constitutional oath were left to themselves. 
Many of them kept the old forms, but most married and modified their 
beUefs, so that, after Robespierre [§ 15], when churches were re-dedicated 
to Christian worship, virtual protestantism predominated, usually under 
the name of old Catholicism. But for Napoleon's concordat with Pius VII, 
France might have become a protestant country. Stephens, I, x. 



'i)J2 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

^ I.e., for four years, each Assembly like each of our Congresses exist- 
ing two years. Strictly, as it could only postpone, it was not a veto at all. 



§ 13 Political Grouping 

Taine, bk. iv. Michelet, Precis, ch. v. Blanc, vol. v, ch. v, also bk. vil. ' Camille 
Desmoulins,' Westminster Rev., July, 1882. Stephens, I, iv, viii. 

Success in revolution rendered political thought 
active, heated and energetic beyond all precedent. The 
issue between the old order and the new gave way to 
that between monarchy and republicanism, then this 
to strife between moderate and extreme republican 
factions. Of clubs ^ there were : i The Feiiillants? 
constitutional monarchists, La Fayette and Bailly at 
head. 2 TJie yacobins, republicans, of every stripe, in- 
cluding first or last all the great revolutionists. This 
club had branches throughout France, was the acknowl- 
edged and efficient organ of the party, creator of public 
opinion, with more power than the legislature itself. 
For months at a time it was the de facto sovereign of 
France. 3 The Cordeliers^ anarchists, nihilists, red 
republicans, led by Danton at first, then by Hebert. 
Of parties the Legislative Assembly, which succeeded 
the Constituent, was divided into : i The Ext7'e7ne 
Right y greatly attached to the king yet loyal to the 
constitution. 2 The Right, men from the middle ranks 
of society, moderate royalists, friends of the constitu- 
tion but inclined to ally themselves with the old privi- 
leged classes and hostile to popular rule. The leader of 
these was La Fayette. Both Right and Extreme Right 
were Feuillantists. 3 The Centj^e, consisting of timid 
and insignificant* members and usually voting with 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 3/3 

4 The Left, the Girondists,^ who were earnest republi- 
cans, devoted to the Revolution even at the expense of 
the constitution, opposed to privilege and favoring popu- 
lar government yet insisting that this be strong and 
regular. Here stood Roland, Vergniaud, Brissot, Con- 
dorcet and many other of the ablest and best men. 5 
The Extreme Left or 'Mountain,'^ ultra-republicans, 
approaching nihilism, made up of a few Cordeliers with 
the increasing number of extreme Jacobins. Under 
the Convention the Feuillants disappeared and deadly 
struggle was joined between Gironde and Mountain. 
As it advanced four marked types of republicanism 
shaped themselves, represented respectively by Roland, 
pure Girondist, Danton, now become relatively conserv- 
ative, Robespierre, socialist yet believer in public order, 
and Hebert, downright nihilist. In the terrible war of 
these factions for supremacy, the Gironde fell first, then 
Hebert and his colleagues at the other extreme, last 
Danton, leaving Robespierre victor, dictator of France. 

1 Taking their names from the convents in whose halls they had their 
respective headquarters. The Jacobin centre was the old convent on rue 
\ St. Hotiore, the Cordelier-convent stood on the left bank of the Seine, and 
,' what is left of it serves as laboratory for the faculty of medicine of the 
University. The enclosure of the Feuillant-convent occupied the space 
now lying between rue St. Honore and the terrace of the Tuileries garden, 
still known as the Terrasse des Feuillants. The buildings M'ere destroyed 
in 1804 to make place for the rtie de Rivoli. Ducoudray, 126. Adequate 
treatment of these clubs would have to be dynamic, as, like all else in 
France then, they were in constant movement as to spirit and tendencies. 
I 2 These were till July, 1791, a branch of the Jacobins, seceding [under 

the influence of the eloquent Barnave] because more conservative than 
the main body. The original organization began in 1789 as royalist, sup- 
porting Philippe Egalite [§ 9, n. 3], Louis Philippe being for a time 
door-keeper of the Paris chapter. On the growth of the Jacobins, Taine, 



374 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

bk, iv, ch. ii. There was a club at Marseilles by the end of '89, one in 
each large town by the middle of '90, in August of this year, 60, 3 months 
later 100, in March of '91, 229, in August nearly 400. Recruits rapidly 
multiplied after the Feuillant secession, July, '91 : in 2 months 600 new 
clubs, by the end of September these amount to 1000, in June, '92, to 
I2CX), at the abolition of monarchy, Sept. 21, '92, to 26,ocx). Yet Taine is 
of opinion that the total enrolment at no time exceeded 300,000, It was 
their discipline which made them so powerful. 

3 These too, at first, a mere sect, exceptionally radical, of the Jacobins. 
Danton believed in using terror to save the country, but when this was 
attained favored moderation. Desmoulins's Old Cordelier was the able 
exponent of Dantonist views now, against Hebert and his rufifians, repre- 
senting the new or advanced Cordeliers. But Danton and his set were 
infidels and free and easy as to conduct, while Robespierre was a sincere 
deist and affected purity and even austerity in morals. Stephens calls 
Danton ' the great practical statesman of the second period of the Revolu- 
tion, the one great man who perceived the necessity for a strong govern- 
ment to re-establish order.' 

* Hence nicknamed 'Plain,' 'Swamp,' * Belly,' 'Flats.' 

5 So called because their chief representatives were from the Gironde 
department. Taine sees little more good in these men than in their mur- 
derers. Madame Roland is to him nothing but a vain and self-deluded 
creature. 

^ Named from their high seats in the Legislative Assembly. The 
Mountain comprised the last three republican factions mentioned, Robes- 
pierre as well as Danton and Hebert. On Robespierre's treachery to 
Danton, v. Sybel, vol. iii, 296. He uses D. to help make way with Hebert, 
then sentences Danton as well. He rides out with D. after signing the 
decree for his execution. On Robespierre's religious belief, same as Vol- 
taire's, see V. Sybel, vol. iii, 271, 279, and Lewes, L. of Robespierre. By 
long effort he persuaded a majority of the Jacobins to declare for belief in 
God and providence. On his death, Blanc, vol. xi, ch. vii, 



§ 14 Political Forces and Currents 

Taine, bk. iv. Sybel, bks. iii, iv, viii, ch. iv. Van Laun, vol. i, end. Blanc, vols, x, xi. 

The Gironde was able, eloquent, patriotic, and had a 
majority in the Assembly, but was 'unable to appre- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 375 

hend the fearful nature of the crisis, too full of vanity 
and exclusive party-spirit, and too fastidious to strike 
hands with the vigorous and stormy Danton,' the only 
man who could have helped it to popular power. * The 
Mountain represented the suffering populace, eager, 
defiant, weary of negotiation, suspicious of treason at 
every point, and zealously determined to push the prin- 
ciples of the Revolution to their limits, ready for war, 
come what might, quite honest and narrow, a very 
dangerous and powerful party.' ^ The Mountain won 
swift victory, but in order to this, had to yield in dis- 
graceful degree, a necessity which both Danton and 
Robespierre inwardly regretted, to the terrible nihilistic 
rage of Hebert and his Parisian mob, arch enemies 
of order, who viewed the Revolution merely as the 
appointed opportunity to plunder the rich. The influ- 
ence of these Nihilists on the course of events before 
Hebert's fall was as immense as it was baneful. Their 
method, persistently used and about always successful, 
was brow-beating in debate, and, this failing, intimida- 
tion through murder, riot and robbery. The odious 
secret Committee of Public Safety,^ whose Reign of 
Terror so long dictated France's destinies, took orders 
mostly from them. The more moderate leaders them- 
selves had fatally little idea ^ of the nature of free insti- 
tutions and, mere theorists as they too nearly were, still 
less of the means to the attainment of them. * O 
Liberty,' said Madame Roland from her scaffold, *what 
crimes men commit in thy name ! ' 

1 Kitchin. The Mountain and the * Commune ' were not the same, 
except in spirit, the latter being only a Parisian affair. Strictly it was the 
city of Paris governmentally considered, though the term is often made 



3/6 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

to convey a bad sense, as if denoting partly or exclusively the mob. ' Com- 
munism ' is an economic title and has no connection with * Commune.' 
The Tenor commenced June i, 1793, when Assembly surrendered to Com- 
viiine, giving up by a sort of Pride's Purge, 80 of its Girondist members. 

- This Committee was created April 6, 1793, composed of 9 members, 
Danton, Cambon and Barrere the chief. In June St. Just, St. Andre, 
Couthon, Robespierre and Carnot were added. A Revolutionary Tribunal, 
or Star Chamber, was also erected, of which the Com. of Public Safety 
had charge, and this duplex arrangement extended to every Commune in 
France. Girondists wished to trust royalist plotters like other criminals 
to the ordinary processes of law, but Mountain and Commune would not. 
Using this summary procedure ultra revolutionists were enabled to secure 
membership or influence in the Tribunal and wreak vengeance on whom 
they would. But when schism broke out among the fire-eaters themselves 
their fine devices proved happily efficacious enginery for their own over- 
throw. On Paris as the Workshop of the Rev., Stephens, I, iv. 

^ 'The Constituent Assembly deliberately refused to consider man as 
he really was, and persisted in seeing nothing in him but the abstract 
being created in books. Consequently, with the blindness and obstinacy 
characteristic of a speculative surgeon, it destroyed in the society sub- 
mitted to its scalpel and to its theories not only the tumors, the enlarge- 
ments and the inflamed parts of the organs but also the organs themselves, 
and even the vital governing centres around which the cells arrange them- 
selves to recompose an injured organ.' Taine. His arraignment of the 
Legislative Assembly, republican, is correspondingly severer. 



§ 15 March of the Republic^ 

Michelet, Precis, chaps, ix, xi, xiv sqq. Morris, iii-vii. Blanc, vol. iv, bk. iv, ch. vi, 
bk. V, vol. V, bk. vi, bks. viii sqq. 

i The Legislative Assembly^ 1 791-1 792. The Gironde, 
furnishing the ministry, directed affairs at first, intent 
upon vigorous war^ against the emigrants and their 
aUies. Ill success in the Belgian campaign, France 
being invaded and Paris threatened, overthrows the 
ministry, whereupon, the king calling Feuillants once 
more to office, the horrors of August 10, 1792, ensue. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 37/ 

Priests are massacred, the king is suspended and im- 
prisoned and all power thrown into radical hands. The 
Jacobins are now on high, Marat calling loudly for 
traitors' heads, Danton for ^ de Vaudace, de Vaiidace^ 
cncoj^e de Vaiidace' against the invaders. This inspiring 
cry checks the tide of defeat, Dumouriez being victor 
at Valniy on September 20th. Next day assembles, ii 
The National Convention,^ 1 792-1 795, which at its first 
session proclaims France a republic. Radicalism goes 
mad with this victory. King, Queen, and Duke of 
Orleans are executed, as well as many Feuillants and 
even Girondists. The Terror.^ Woe now to any one 
venturing so much as to whisper of moderation. Chris- 
tianity is proscribed, the worship of Reason ordained, 
commerce paralyzed by the excess of assignats. Civil 
war rages in la Vendee. A new calendar ^ and a new con- 
stitution •" are devised. Saint-Just and Couthon with and 
under Robespierre form a 'triumvirate,' ruling France 
with worse than Bourbon arbitrariness and cruelty. 
Reaction : Robespierre falls,^ anarchy is checked, even 
the Mountain becomes conservative, Dantonists and the 
Gironde gradually return to power. The 'Thermido- 
rians ' close the Jacobin clubs, open churches and seek 
to restore public tranquillity, now threatened mainly by 
royalists again. With the constitution of 1795, the 
year III, comes in the moderate government of iii The 
Directory, 1795 to end of 1799. Task, to guard the 
Republic from anarchists, now desperate, and, harder 
yet, from the monarchists, who were daily increasing 
and, as represented in both Councils and at length in 
the Directory itself, more hopeful and insolent. These 



3/8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

extremists aside, there was general apathy as to politics 
and wish for peace at any price. Spite of the Direc- 
tory's best efforts^ internal disorder was terrible and 
constitutional rule impossible. The coup d'etat had to 
be used, first against royalists, then against republicans. 
The press throttled, all Europe threatening, France 
sighed for rest and prepared to return, with the Con- 
sulate, to absolutism. 

1 1789, States-general meet, May 5; serment du jeu de paume, and 

destruction of the Bastille, June 20. 
1789-91, Constituent Assembly. 

1 79 1, Mirabeau dies. 

1791-92, Legislative Assembly. 

1792, War with Austria and Prussia; abolition of monarchy, Sept. 21. 
1792-95, National Convention. 

1793, King executed Jan. 21, queen Oct. 16, Com. of Public Safety 

begins Ap. 6. 
i793-'4, Robespierre and the Terror. 

1794, Robespierre executed July 27 [the 9th of Thermidor, hence 

'Thermidorians' as name of those who take him off]. 

1795, The Dauphin [Louis XVII] dies June 8; Napoleon quells the 

Babeuf mob in Paris, Oct. 5. 

2 The Constituent had most unfortunately passed a self-denying ordi- 
nance which forbade any of its members to sit in this. Also no one who 
had been a member of the legislature within two years could serve as king's 
minister. 

^ Which the Mountain opposed, to distract ministry and king, and 
when, after defeat in the field, Louis exchanged obnoxious ministers for 
those still more obnoxious, riot and blood resulted. Among the most vio- 
lent insurgents were 500 young soldiers from Marseilles, recently come to 
Paris. From them the Marseillaise, whose refrain : 

Aux arms, citoyens! Formez vos batalloiis! 

Marchons! Marchons! qiitin sang impur abrieuve nos sillons. 

4 In this sat Tom Paine, the quondam American pamphleteer. The 
Englishman, Dr. Priestly, was elected but declined serving. Paine voted 
nay on the question of executing Louis. 

^ On the Terror, June i, 1793-July 27, 1794, see Ternaux, Hist, de la 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 3/9 

Terreur, Taine, bk. iv, chaps, xi, xii, bks. v sqq., Blanc, vols, x, xi, ch. iv. 
Pitt was, and by many still is, believed to have instigated these excesses 
in order to make revolution odious, v. Sybel doubts. The victims to the 
Terror during its 420 awful days are computed at 4000, at least 900 being 
women and children. 

6 1792 was the year I, and it began on Sept. 22, the autumnal equinox 
and the day after the abolition of monarchy. The three months, of 30 
days each, next following this date were Vendemiaire [vintage-month], 
Brumaire [fog-month], Frimaire [frost-month]. The next three, begin- 
ning 90 days later, were AHvose [snow-month], Pluviose [rain-month], 
Ventbse [wind-month]. The next three, beginning 180 days from Sept. 
22, were Germinal [bloom-month], Floreal [flower-month], Prairial 
[meadow-month]. The last three, beginning 270 days from Sept. 22, 
were Messidor [harvest-month], Thermidor^ [hot-month], 7^^wf//^(3r [fruit- 
month]. This calendar has been Englished thus: 1st quarter, Wheezy, 
Sneezy, Freezy; 2nd quarter. Slippy, Drippy, Nippy; 3d quarter. Showery, 
Flowery, Bowery; 4th quarter, Wheaty, Heaty, Sweety. Three 'decades' 
a month took the place of the four weeks, and in each the days were to 
be Primidi, Duodi, Tridi, Quartidi, Quintidi^ Sextidi, Septidi, Octidi, 
A^onidi, and Decadi. Every Decadi was to be a day of rest. The five 
supplementary days to fill out the year were called sans-cullotides. 

"^ Rotteck and Welcker's Staatslexicon, s. v. ' Frankreich,' has a good 
brief account of these revolutionary constitutions. There are many col- 
lections of the texts. This second constitution never went into effect. 
The third one, that of the year III, introduced an executive Directory of 
5 members, and a Legislature consisting of a Senate or Council of 250 
Elders with power of revision, and a lower Council of 500 with initiative, 
% of both Councils to be elected from the members of the Convention. 
It was this limitation which occasioned the Babeuf riot of Oct. 5, 1795, 
put down by Napoleon. Fleury, Babeuf ei le Socialisme, Stephens I, vii. 

8 Blanc, vol. xi, ch. vii, bk. xiii. 

^ Improving the finances by substituting for the assignats [§ 12, n. 4], 
* mandats'' [each one of which formed a direct title to a given, limited 
quantity of land], suppressing Babeuf on the one hand and myalist ris- 
ings on the other, and winning glorious and unprecedented victories in 
foreign war [§§ 17, 18]. 



380 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



§ 16 King and Emigrants 

Michelet, Precis, chaps, vi-ix. Sarah Tytler, Marie Antoinette. Gower, Last days 
of do. Sybel, Correspondence of do. [Kl. h. Schr., II] . A rfieth, Briefwechsel der 
M. Antoinette. 

Early in the struggle most nobles, shorn of privileges 
and distinction and feeling no longer under obligation 
to France, 'emigrated.' Not content with this many 
of them exerted themselves to secure an invasion of 
France by foreigners to restore the monarchy. By this, 
in the eyes of France and under strict construction 
of the law in fact, they became traitors.^ Should the 
king side with these as urged by his queen, brothers 
and court,2 qj. ^yj^h France } For long, under Mira- 
beau's^ influence, he pursued, honestly we can scarcely 
doubt, the latter course, accepting the constitution and 
repeatedly swearing the civic oath. Had he possessed 
ability and decision as well as honesty and kindly feel- 
ing, he might possibly have kept at the head of the move- 
ment, prevented reform from becoming revolution, and 
erected m France a sound constitutional monarchy. To 
such a work Louis XVI was unequal. The Assembly's 
high tone, and especially its severe measures toward the 
clergy, embittered him and inclined him more and 
more, despite constant indecision, which was, doubt- 
less wrongly, construed as hypocrisy, to cast in his 
lot with the emigrants. He corresponded with them, 
attempted flight* to their camp, and invoked aid from 
the monarchs^ of Europe, all which was regarded at 
Paris as treason. Special incitements to severe pro- 
cedure against him were (i) his numerous vetoes^ of the 
Assembly's decrees, (2) his dismissal of the Girondist 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 38 I 

ministry, Roland, Dumouriez and their colleagues, (3) 
the attitude of Marie Antionette,' known to have a con- 
stant understanding with emigrants and hostile courts, 
(4) conventions between the sovereigns of Austria and 
Prussia looking toward intervention in French affairs, 
and (5) the actual invasion of France by the Duke of 
Brunswick with an army of foreigners and traitors. 
Repulse of this army emboldened the republicans to 
proclaim defiance of Europe by summoning the king to 
trial. Six hundred and eighty-three out of the seven 
hundred and twenty-one voices in the Convention de- 
clared him guilty, but the death sentence passed by a 
majority of only one.^ 

1 Because by international law a nation's identity or personality does 
not change with its form of government. The king and many of the emi- 
grants could not have fully appreciated this. Woolsey, International Law, 
has good discussions of the international-legal questions connected with 
the Revolution. 

2 Court and royal family early and almost entirely went over to the 
emigrants. 

3 Mirabeau, dying in 1 79 1, was the last man able to influence the king 
in the right direction. He was in the better condition to do this in that 
his own temper in his last days was less radical than in '89. Had he lived 
things might have proceeded more happily. See Stephens, I, xiv. 

* Carlyle has a powerful description of this attempt, vol. ii, bk. iv 
[Tauchnitz ed.]. Cf. Stephens, I, xv. 

5 From those of Germany, Prussia, Russia, England and Sweden. 
This after accepting the constitution. He requested them to keep his 
invitation secret, yet assured them that they would be warring not with 
the nation but with a faction. 

c The king's veto power had been placed in the constitution against 

great opposition, and the rabble regarded his use of it malfeasance in 

office if not downright treason. They dubbed him Monsieur Veto, and 

sang : 

'Monsieur Veto avait promts 
D'etre fidele a sa patrie, 
Mais il y a vianqtii 
Ne faisons plus cartie.' 



382 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

■^ She in a similar way was called Madame Veto : 

* Madame Veto av ait promis 
Defaire egorger tout Paris, 
Mais son cotip a tnanque, 
Grdce a nos cannoniers.^ 

8 The Girondists earnestly sought to save Citizen Capet, as he was now 
known, Vergniaud making on his behalf an impassioned plea. The ver- 
dict was procured by the influence of the mob. The minority were for 
banishment or imprisonment. King and queen were both very brave and 
firm at the last. Marie Antoinette, sentenced, and asked if she had aught 
to say, replied: ' I was a queen, — ye took my crown; a wife, — ye slew 
my husband; a mother, — ye robbed from me my children. Naught is 
left me but my blood : take it and end my agony as quickly as ye can.' 
Madame Elizabeth, the king's sister, was also executed. All power in the 
state now passes from Gironde to Mountain, at the same time that both a 
civil and a foreign war impend [preceding §]. 

§ 17 Europe and the Republic 

Morris, vii-xi. Sorel, L' Europe ei la Rev. Franqaise. Michelet, Precis, 
chaps, ix, xi-xiii. Blanc, vol. iv, bk. iv, ch. i, bks. vii, x. 

Most Other nations were from the beginning hostile 
to the new movement in France. Abuses similar to 
those which had there evoked rebellion were general, 
and holders of privilege everywhere feared overthrow 
should the revolt spread. In the execution of Louis, 
monarchs felt themselves at once insulted, defied and 
threatened. It was worse when, in face of that inter- 
national law which the Legislative Assembly had rebuked 
the powers for disregarding, new France, constituting 
itself a propaganda of democracy, set out to establish 
this over all Europe. Emperor Leopold 11,^ brother of 
Marie Antoinette, by his circular of July 6, 1791, so- 
licited a declaration on the part of other sovereigns 
that they would defend Louis from the Assembly. The 
king of Prussia joined him in repeating this invitation, 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 383 

from Pillnitz in August of the same year, and the next 
February these rulers, in spite of Louis's pubHc assur- 
ance that he accepted the constitution, removing all 
semblance of just pretext for intervention, formed a 
league to impose upon France the old government by 
force. The pacific Leopold died on March i, 1792, and 
his son Francis was more aggressive. Austria's ulti- 
matum in April was of the nature of a command to 
France to reinstate privilege and to restore the church 
lands. Prussia soon joins Austria, Sardinia arms.^ 
France becomes indignant, and Louis, in the hands of 
his Girondist ministry, cannot but declare war (April 
20, 1792). The republican campaign of 1792 begins 
unfavorably but ends with enormous victories, which 
leave Belgium and most of the empire left of the Rhine 
in French hands. Other governments had thus far 
held back, but this startling enlargement of French and 
of republican sway, and especially the fate of the king, 
rouses all Europe,^ with armies comprising 200,000 men, 
to attack the Republic. Even England now draws the 
sword, Pitt at last yielding to the growing conservative 
clamor, becoming till his death soul as well as brain to 
the allied foes of France. During most of 1793 the 
Republic is unfortunate, still this year too ends with 
sweeping successes.* Gigantic armies are equipped, 
led by marshals like Pichegru, Moreau, Jourdain and 
Hoche. The winter of 1794-5 sees Holland con- 
quered^ and the entire left bank of the Rhine from 
Basle made French. Tuscany wills peace early in 1795, 
Prussia^ next, Spain soon after. England, Austria and 
Sardinia yet remain firm, but Napoleon's astounding 



384 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Italian campaigns of 1796-7^ quiet Sardinia and force 
Austria to the Peace of Campo Formio, October 17, 
1797, thus extending the dominion of the Republic 
over all Northern and Central Italy. Pitt too seeks 
peace but the Directory declines. 

1 Emperors Joseph II and Leopold II were both sons of Maria Theresa, 
brothers of Marie Antoinette. Leopold died, Mch. i, 1792, when Francis, 
his son, nephew of the French queen, became king of Hungary and 
Bohemia, to be elected emperor the following July 3. More rash, he 
issued in April, 1792, his ultimatum, demanding the status quo of June 23, 
1789, i.e., the abolition of the constitution and the revocation of all that 
the Constituent had done. Fyffe, I, i. 

2 But this is not commonly reckoned as one of the regular coalitions 
against France. Prussia as usual did Austria's bidding. Cf. Ch. XI, 

§§ 9 sqq. 

^ Except Sweden and Denmark: the y?rj/ European Coalition. Pitt 
had at the outset tried to keep England from taking part in the war. The 
English have been the foremost European nation to insist upon a people's 
right to change its form of government at pleasure, unhindered by its 
neighbors, — a principle of international law less firmly settled in 1792 
than now. But it was a principle even then. The coalition had to seek 
its formal justification for opposing France in the doctrine of the balance 
of power. 

* Thanks to Carnot's inspiring genius, carrying through the general 
levy, organizing the troops and selecting leaders. Fyffe, I, ii. 

^ The work of Pichegru, who thus accomplished what Louis XIV in 
his time could not. Holland becomes the Batavian Repubhc, 1 795-1806. 
The other republics soon existing under the presidency of the French 
were i) the Helvetic, in Switzerland, fr. 1798, ii) the Ligurian: Sardinia 
and Genoa, fr. 1797, iii) the Cisalpine: Milan, Modena, Ferrara, Bologna, 
Romagna, etc., fr. 1797, iv) the Roman, Rome, fr. 1798, v) the Partheno- 
paic, Naples, fr. 1799. 

6 The Peace of Basel [B^sle], April, 1795. 

"' The victories of Millessimo, Montenotte, Lodi, Castiglione, Areola, 
Rivoli, and Tagliamento. By this Peace of Campo Formio Austria ceded 
to France Belgium, the last of the lands she had received by the marriage 
of Mary of Burgundy with Maximilian I. See Ch. VIII, § 17, Ch. IX, 
§ 3, n. 4, Fyffe, I, iii. 



the french revolution 385 

§ 18 The Rise of Napoleon^ 

Fyffe, vol. i. Lanfreyy Napoleon I. Seeley, do. Ropes, The First Napoleon. 
Thiers, Consulate and Empirfe. Fauriel, Last Days of the Consulate. 

His first campaigns in Italy rendered Napoleon vir- 
tually dictator of France, giving him an overwhelming- 
popularity, which even his wild and disastrous Egyptian 
expedition, leaving the Republic's conquests of previous 
years to be mostly lost, did not diminish. The not 
difficult coitp d'etat of i8th Bnimaire on his return, 
made him First Consul and paved his way to the impe- 
rial throne. This promotion of Napoleon, with the 
reactionary, absolutist changes of constitution which it 
involved, may be referred to the : i Universal political 
unrest in France, cry for government that should be 
strong and stable. 2 Increasing weakness, selfishness, 
tyranny of the Directory. 3 Unspent will of the 
French, satisfiable only through Napoleon, to take 
vengeance upon Europe for having first meddled with 
France's affairs. 4 Still vigorous hatred of Bour- 
bonism and love of freedom, most of his subjects view- 
ing Napoleon even when emperor, as the general ^ of 
the Republic, and either not noticing his despotism 
or condoning it as but a temporary means to liberty. 
5 Great organizing ability of Napoleon in civil things, 
in time source to the nation of extraordinary benefits, 
such as firm government, financial surplus, a thing 
before unknown, educational and judicial reforms, recon- 
struction of the church, and adornment of Paris. It is 
to his credit that Napoleon furthered as well as so fully 
used the new social vigor which abolition of privilege 
and the promotion of the third estate had brought the 



386 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

French people. His rule at its worst was incomparably 
superior to that of the Bourbons. 6 Unmatched career 
of stupendous victories, lifting France to the headship 
of Europe. These victories were due mainly to Napo- 
leon's transcendent military genius, partly to the belief 
that he represented liberalism, partly to favoring con- 
ditions in Europe. Except Wellington and Archduke 
Charles — and neither of these was what Nelson was 
upon the sea — Napoleon's military antagonists were 
not commanders of the highest order. Of statesmen 
he feared Pitt and Stein alone. Pitt was continually 
opposed at home, at length supplanted in mid-struggle 
by a weaker premier, who hastened to make peace. 
Jealousy and discord prevailed among the continen- 
tal rulers. Hatred of Austria and of the old empire 
told powerfully for France. The Confederation of the 
Rhine,^ Napoleon's most obedient servant, long fur- 
nished a large part of his best troops. Prussia after a 
first harmless dash held aloof, meanly trading with 
France at Germany's expense, till Austria was ruined, 
then rushed to battle all unprepared, to be crippled for 
nought. 

1 ijgS-y, Napoleon's first Italian campaign. 
i798[May]-'9[Oct.], his Egyptian expedition. 

1798, Ba///e of the Nile, May. 

1799, Second Coalition against France: by Austria, Gt. Britain, 

Russia, Naples, Turkey; year of constant defeat for France; 
Coup d'etat Nov. 9 \_Brumaire 18th], Napoleon First 
Consul. 

1800, Napoleon's 'forty days' campaign ' in Italy; Battles of Marengo 

and Hohenlinden. 

1 801, Peace of Luneville, with Austria. 

1802, Peace of Amiens, with Gt. Britain; Napoleon Consul for 

Life, August. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 387 

1804, Napoleon Emperor, May. 

1805, Third Coalition, Great Britain, Austria, Russia, Sweden; 

Ulm taken, Austerlitz won, Fence of Fresbtcrg, with Austria; 
Battle of Trafalgar, Oct. [' England expects every man to 
do his duty']. 

1806, Confederation of the Rhine formed; end of the Holy Roman 

Empire ; FOURTH Coalition, Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, 
Saxony; Battles of Jena and Auerstddt, Oct.; Prussia 
crushed; the Berlin Decree. 

1807, Battle of Eylati, Feb., bloodiest of all Napoleon's victories; 

Peace of Tilsit, July, with Prussia and Russia; the Milan 
Decree, Nov. 

1809, Fifth Coalition, Gt. Britain and Austria; Napoleon defeated 

by Archduke Charles at Aspern and Essling, May, but victor 
at Wagram, July; Peace of Vienna, Oct. 

1 8 10, Napoleon at the Acme of his Power. 

181 1, King of Rome born, Mch. 20. See further, § 19, n. i. 

2 Not wholly an error. That Napoleon was selfish and ambitious, 
unworthy of comparison with Washington, and that many of his deeds 
after he became powerful were indescribably atrocious is most true. 
'Lanfrey, again, in our day has finally demolished the Napoleonic legend, 
and has torn the mask from the most astounding imposter and unques- 
tionably the biggest liar in modern history, and by his clear and cutting 
evidence has reduced to its real proportions that orgy of blood and arro- 
gance — the European tyranny of Bonaparte.' Harrison. Still it must be 
admitted that Napoleon's spirit and actions were eminently liberal as con- 
trasted with those of the Bourbons and of European courts in general. 
Had it been otherwise they would easily have made and kept peace with 
him. Ropes sets Napoleon's character in a very correct historical light. 
Seeley is less just, not unwilling but unable to forget that he is English. 
He even attacks the world's estimate of Napoleon as a general. On this 
point Ropes is as conclusive as he is interesting. His battle-maps, the 
best we have ever seen, make Napoleon's tactics clear as day. 

^ This began with Mainz, Bavaria, WUrttemberg, Baden, Hessen-Darm- 
stadt, Berg, and Nassau. Later all the German Fiirsten belonged, except 
Austria, Prussia, Brunswick and Electoral Hesse. The Confederation 
sprung far more from dislike of Austria and Prussia than from coercion 
by Napoleon. See Ch. IX, § 18. Half Napoleon's soldiers in Spain in 
1809 were Germans, and 200,000 or more of those he led into Russia in 
1 81 2. South Germany has ever since been much attached to France. 



388 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



§ 19 His Downfall 1 

Fyffe, I, viii-xi. Sybel, in Kl. h. Schr., I, Erhebung Europas gegeti Nap. I. Saint- 
Amand, Memoirs of Nap. and Marie Louise. Wartefibiirg, Nap. als Feldherr, 
2 V. Forsyth, Nap. at St. Helena, 3 v. Gardiner, Quatre-Bras, Ligny and Water- 
loo. Vaulabelle, IVaterloo-Li'gtty, Lecky, chaps, xxi, xxii. 

I With increase of dominion Napoleon lost whatever 
desire may have inspired his earlier conquests to make 
them further the real interests of the conquered, giv- 
ing way to a mere vulgar lust for power. France was 
stretched over half Europe, most of the rest in vassal- 
age. These subject nations had to fill the emperor's 
coffers, fight his battles. He made his a family of 
kings,^ set up and pulled down thrones at his whim, his 
tyranny goading minions, even relatives, to revolt. 2 
This spirit and policy wrought against him worst in 
England, rendering the solid nation, Whigs now even 
more than Tories, his deadly foes. Worse when, en- 
raged by England's mastery of the seas and in despair 
of humbling her directly, he uttered the famous Berlin 
Decree,^ forbidding all trade between the continent and 
British ports. Fruits of this were (i) Britain's attempt 
to blockade French Europe, (2) the American Non- 
Intercourse Act, (3) Wellington's long, brilliant and at 
last victorious fight for Spain,* (4) new and desperate 
hatred of French sway on the continent, where, in spite 
of persistent contraband trade, the ' continental system ' 
immensely increased prices, and (5) the renewed and this 
time uncompromising hostility of Russia, leading to the 
crushing Moscow campaign which cost 350,000 men, and 
depriving the emperor of the to him so important naval 
aid of Russia and Sweden. 3 But the head continental 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 389 

force in the final overthrow of the ' Corsican Sesostris ' 
was Prussia, the chief recipient of his hatred and abuse, 
which most happily evoked here an entire new national 
life. Stein's civil and Scharnhorst's military reforms 
had, under the tyrant's eye yet unnoticed by him, at 
last raised Prussia to an eminence of power beyond 
even that attained under Frederic the Great. Forbid- 
den to keep more than 42,000 men in arms, they drilled 
first one set, then another, till the entire male popula- 
tion was army. Fichte preached of freedom, poets like 
Arndt,^ Korner, Riickert sang. The people as one man 
willed freedom. Answering the king's appeal ^A7i incin 
Volk,' March 17, 1813, 110,000 men rallied to arms in 
ten days, 170,000 more by the end of May, whose 
quality Napoleon tested to his sorrow at Leipzig, Ligny 
and Waterloo. Wellington had to thank Blticher for 
Quatre-Bras, Gneisenau for Waterloo.^ 

1 See § 18, n. i. 

1812, Invasion of Russia: Battle of Borodino, Sept. 7; Moscow 

burned, Sept. 16-19. 

1 81 3, Wellington sweeps Spain: Battles of Vittoria and the Pyre- 

nees, June; in the North, Battles of Liitzen atid Bautzen, 
May; Sixth and Last Coalition, Gt. Britain, Austria, 
Russia, Prussia, Sweden; Battle of Leipzig, Oct. 16-19. 

1814, Allies enter Paris, Mch. 31; First Peace of Paris, lsi2iy Tfi; 

Bourbon Restoration [Louis XVIII] ; Congress of Vienna 
opens, Sept. 

1815, The Hundred Days: Waterloo, June 18; Napoleon to St. 

Helena, Oct. ; Second Peace of Paris, Nov. 
The defence by Wellington of the Torres Vedras line in Autumn, 1810 
[n. 4], against Massena, 'the favored child of victory,' was the turning- 
point in Napoleon's career. His last decisive victory was before this, at 
Wagram, July, 1809. Henceforth downward. He no longer had his old 
skill and promptness in battle. At Borodino victory was in his grasp had 
he sent in the Guard, as all his lieutenants prayed him to do. Tolstoi, 



390 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

War and Peace, gives a most interesting account of this later phase of 
Napoleon's campaigning, yet Ropes is best for military information and 
criticism. 

2 Louis in Holland, Jerome in Westphalia, Joseph in Naples first, then 
in Spain, Marat, Napoleon's brother-in-law, taking Naples. Napoleon's 
own son, the king of Rome and duke of Reichstadt, was acknowledged as 
Napoleon II by Napoleon III on his own rise to power. On the Napo- 
leonidiV, Westminster Rev., 1882, Brewer, France, 432. 

'^ In 1806, Nov. 21. It paper-blockades the British Isles. Another de- 
cree from Milan, Dec. 17, 1807, declares forfeited all vessels wherever 
found, proceeding to or from any British port or having submitted to 
British search or tribute. This was N.'s 'continental system.' British 
Orders in Council, retorting, declared illicit all commerce with the conti- 
nent. Our non-intercourse act was a vain attempt to bring both parties to 
a better mind by refusing to trade with them till they revoked the obnox- 
ious regulations. 

* Portugal defied Napoleon's continental system, evoking his wrath. 
In conjunction with Spain, he deposed the house of Braganza, 1807, occu- 
pying Portugal with 20,000 men. Proceeding also to make Joseph Bona- 
parte king of Spain, 1808, the tyrant found the entire peninsular in arms 
against him, backed by Gt. Britain. In early 1809 Napoleon reduces all 
Spain, Soult forcing back the too small army of Sir John Moore, killed in 
the battle of Corumia, Jan. 16. Sir Arthur Wellesley soon arriving with 
20,000 men, beats Soult at Douro, May 12, and J. Bonaparte, Victor and 
Jourdain at Talavera, July 28. Soon 280,000 French reinforcements 
arrive, and Wellesley retires to the Torres Vedras line, to defend Portu- 
gal. Advancing again in 181 1, he pushes Massena from Almeida, May 6 
[Beresford beating Soult at Albuera the 1 6th], storms Cuidad-Rodrigo^ 
Jan. 19, 181 2, Badajoz, Apr. 7, crushes Marmont at Salamanca, July 22, 
and enters Madrid, Aug. 12. ViTTORiA, June 21, 181 3, totally routs the 
French army and leaves the [now Marquis and even] Duke of Wellington 
free to cross the Pyrenees. Fyffe, I, viii, ix, 

' Our Fatherland, all Germany — 
Who speak the tongue, our sons must be. 
God give us courage, will and strength 
To free it in its breadth and length. 
Join every heart, join every hand. 
Till Germany's one Fatherland.' — Arndt. 

In Prussia no one did more to rouse and maintain this stout spirit than 
Queen Louise, Emperor William's mother. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 39I 

^ Blucher, by fighting at Ligny, saved Wellington's detachment at 
Quartre-Bras from being overwhelmed. Late in the evening at Ligny, 
BlUcher fell insensible, supposed dead. The vital question whether to re- 
treat homeward or so as to join Wellington was decided in favor of the 
latter course by Gneisenau, B.'s chief of staff. The arrangement defeated 
Napoleon at Waterloo. Cf. Ch. IX, § 11, n. 5, Gardner, as above, Del- 
briick, Leben Gneisenaus, 2 v. This Gneisenau had served in America in 
a regiment of Anspach troops. On this note and the preceding, cf. Ch. 
XI, § 8, with notes and authorities. Fyffe, I, xi. 



§ 20 Results 

Adams, Democracy and Monarchy in Fr. Guizot, Memoirs to illust. the H. of my 
Time, 4 v. Treitschke, ' Freiheit,' in Au/saetze. Ch. XI [post], § 9. 

The Congress of Vienna and the Second Peace of 
Paris restored the map of Europe to about the form it 
had in 1791.^ The number of states was much reduced, 
chiefly by the disappearance of ecclesiastical principali- 
ties. The Germanic Confederation took the place of the 
empire. Prussia was vastly increased in size. Bavaria, 
Hannover, Wiirttemberg and Saxony were made king- 
doms, the first three enlarged, the last diminished to 
half its old size. These modifications however scarcely 
hint at the radical, pervasive and lasting changes which 
the revolutionary movement effected in the political 
condition of Europe, not a single element of this escap- 
ing positive influence therefrom.^ The immediate 
sequel was indeed an absolutistic reaction,^ in France 
itself, under Napoleon, the restored Bourbons and the 
second empire ; also elsewhere in Europe : Metternich, 
the Holy Alliance,* absolutism, striving for freedom 
repressed in Germany, Italy and Spain. Yet the spirit 
of liberty lived on in spite of these efforts to suppress 
it, increasing in strength and asserting itself more and 



392 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

more effectively, in France, under Louis Philippe, the 
Second Republic and the present Republic, the last 
two no new creations but adjourned sessions as it were, 
of the First. Elsewhere in Europe there came oblivion 
of Metternich and his political ideas, the introduc- 
tion of constitutions in all the German states, and the 
rise of the National-Liberal party in Prussia, which has 
made political unity in Germany at last after so many 
ages a reality. By arousing and liberalizing Prussia 
French republicanism may be said to have twice, in 
1815 and 1870, slain its worst foe at home, the empire. 
Nor is the train of causation starting from the French 
Revolution exhaustively conceived without remembering 
further the (i) union of Italy under a single govern- 
ment, for the first time since Justinian,^ (2) growth of 
liberalism in England, partly out of hatred to Napoleon, 
partly from correct insight into and true sympathy with 
the French agitation at its beginning,^ (3) freedom of 
the Spanish-American republics, (4) rise and life of the 
Democratic Party and of the Monroe Doctrine " in the 
United States, (5) Belgium and Greece. 

1 See Freeman, Ilist'l Geography, 229 sqq., Lodge, Mod. Europe, 629 
sqq. On the higghng and the httleness displayed at the Congress of 
Vienna, Ch. XI, § 9 and notes. 

2 * The French Revolution was the work of philosophers, and it was, 
compared with the English Revolution, a failure, and ended in Ctesarism, 
that is, in the government of Hell upon earth.' — Bisset. Bisset, of all 
men, should admit that it did not end in Ccesarism. * If there is one prin- 
ciple in all modern history certain,' declares Harrison, *it is this: That the 
Revolution did not end with the whiff of grape-shot by which Bonaparte 
extinguished the dregs of the Convention.' 'It would be easy to show,' he 
says, ' that the last 50 years of the iSth century was a period more fertile in 
constructive effort than any similar period of 50 years in the history of 
mankind.* 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 393 

8 Reform became and for a time remained a hateful word all over 
Europe. Louis XVIll dated the state papers of 1814 as of the ' 19th year 
of ottr reign.' 

* Formed in 181 5 between the monarchs of Russia, Austria and Prus- 
sia, joined later by Louis XVIII, professedly for the maintenance of the 
Christian religion, though it soon took the form of an absolutist propa- 
ganda, Metternich's mightiest engine for putting down all liberal move- 
ments. 

^ Italy even more than Germany took impulse toward freedom and union 
from French occupancy and the influences connected therewith. 

^ Fox was prompt to declare his sympathy with the Revolution and be- 
lieved Pitt's repressive measures to be of dangerous tendency. This lean- 
ing of his caused coolness between him and Burke when, in 1790, the latter 
published his Reflections. Many in England hailed the Revolution as a 
veritable millennium. ' What an eventful period is this ! I am thankful 
that I have lived to see it; I could almost say, Lord, now letlest thou thy 
servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,'' etc. — Ser- 
mon by Dr. Price, quoted in Burke's Reflections. 

■^ Having restored absolutism in Spain, the Holy Alliance contemplated 
aid to the reinstated monarch in recovering his American fiefs. This 
called forth President Monroe's 'Doctrine' in his message of 1823, to the 
effect that we should consider any attempt on the part of the allied mon- 
archs * to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as danger- 
ous to our peace and safety,' and any interposition by them to control 
the young American republics 'as a manifestation of an unfriendly dis- 
position to the United States.' See ' Democratic-Republican Party,' and 
* Monroe Doctrine,' in Lalor's Cyclopaedia. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY TO CHAPTER XI 

'Prussia' [see lit.], 'Germany,' and 'Austria,' in Encyc. Brit. Alison, 
Europe from Fall of Napoleon,** 8 v. Tuttle, Prussia to Fred. Great;** 
Gn. Pol. Leaders. Miiller, Pol. H. of Recent T. Fyffe, H. of Mod. 
Europe,* vol. ii. Lodge, Mod. Europe. Duruy, Tei7ips Modernes* 
Lewis, H. of Germany. Bryce, chaps, xix, sqq. v. Treitschke, 
Deutsche Gesch. im XIX yahrh.*'^ [3 v. out]; Zehn Jahre deutscher 
Kd77ipfe. Weir, Hist'l Basis of Mod. Europe, 1760-18 15. Seeley, L. and 
Times of Stein,** 2 v. Pertz, Leben d. Min. Freiherrn vom Stein, 2 v. 
Hausser, D. Gesch. vom Tode Fr. c(, Grossen bis zur GrUndung d. d. 
Bti7tdes** 4 V. Weber, JVeltgeschichie, II. Ranke, Memoirs of Bran- 
denburg and Hist, of Prussia dg. XVII and XVIII Cent.,** 3 v.; XII 
Biiche?- preussischen Gesch. ;** Hardenberg, 5 v. Poschinger, Preussen 
im Btmdestag** \^Pub. mis den K. -preussischen Staatsarchiven, vols, xii, 
xiv, XV, xxiii : Eng. trans, begun]. Ruge, Gesch. unserer Zeit, Busch, 
Our Chancellor. Flathe [in Oncken], Zeitalter d. Restauration ti. Revo- 
lution,^* i8i5-'5i. Lohmeyer, Gesch. von Ost-u.- West- Preussen*"* 
[from 1881 on: the standard]. Isaacsohn, Gesch. d. preussischen Beatn- 
tcnthums,** 2 v. Fix, Territorial-gesch. d. Brand.-preussisch. Staates** 
[with maps]. Forster, Neuere u. neueste pr. Gesch. Reimann, N'euere 
Gesch. d. pr. Staates. Heinel, Gesch. Preussens. Pierson, Pr. Ge- 
schichte. Lavisse, Hist, de Prusse. Metternich, Memoirs,* 4 v. 
Eberty, Gesch. d. preussischen Staates, 7 v. Stenzel, do., 5 v. Cosel, 
do., 8 V. Droysen, Gesch. d. preussischen Politik, 14 v. [to beginning of 
7 Years' W.] ; Abhandlungen zur neueren Gesch.* Lancizolle, Gesch. d. 
Bildung d. pr. Staates* Kliipfel, Die deutsche Einheitsbestrebungen seit 
iSi^, 2 V. [All Histories of Germany and of Austria necessarily contain 
much upon this Ch. The most accessible ones are named in Adams's 
Manual.] 



CHAPTER XI 

PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 



§ I Prussia in German History 

Treitschke,^ vol. i, 24 sqq. Droysen, Abhandlungen. Sybel, Deutsche 
Nation u. d. Kaiserreich. 

Despite the divisive influences which have operated 
in the nature and the history of the German people, 
they were manifestly destined for union under a single 
government, nor was it properly credible even in 1648 
that so bright a race would forever continue the prey of 
France or of the shameful anarchy in which the Thirty 
Years' War had left Germany.^ Relief required the 
rise of a political power in resources the peer of France 
on the one hand and of Austria on the other, yet unlike 
Austria in being purely and enthusiastically German. 
Such a state would needs be, like those so efficient politi- 
cal creations, the Hanseatic League ^ and the Teutonic 
Order,* a child of the North, where the German nature 
had lost least of its pristine vigor, and it would go forth 
to impose its will upon the effete South as had of old 
the Karlings and the Saxon emperors. The North had 
carried through the Reformation, defied Rome and 
crushed Rome's Spanish-Austrian defence. The powers, 
Saxony, Anhalt, the Palatinate, which then led had 
indeed since dropped the scepter, but before the end of 



396 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

the seventeenth century another state had grasped it, 
— Brandenburg, soon to be Prussia, the one ordained to 
fulfil all the conditions for founding the unity of the 
Fatherland and introducing a new and glorious era in 
German annals. 

1 Reference to Treitschke unless otherwise indicated is to his Deutsche 
Geschichte ini XlXtett Jahrhunderte. 

2 See Ch. IX, §§ 17-19. 

3 See Ch. IX, § 4, note. 

4 See Ch. VII, § 18, n. 5. 



§ 2 Old Brandenburg 

Tuttle, i, iil. Lodge, Mod. Europe, ch. xvii. Bryce, sup. ch. Carlyle, Frederic Gt., 
vol. i. Weber, I, 711 sqq. Ranke, Genesis d. pr. Staates; XII Bucher, I, i; 
Memoirs, etc., bk, i. Lancizolle, as in bibliog. 

Karl the Great had pushed his conquests to the Elbe^ 
and established the North Mark, now Altmark.^ Henry 
the Fowler conquered half or more of Mittelmark,^ the 
land between Elbe and Oder, which in the fourth cen- 
tury, A.D., Germans had vacated and the Slavic Wends 
occupied. After Henry, notwithstanding a nominal 
succession of margraves, two centuries are a blank, 
Mittelmark and much of Altmark losing their German 
character and becoming Slavic again. Safe Branden- 
burg history begins with Albert the Bear,* 1139-68, of 
the famed Ascanian princely line, who in 11 34 receives 
the Mark, till then mere part of the great Saxon duchy, 
as an immediate fief of the empire. From 11 34 the 
state passes through : i The Ascanian period, till 1320. 
Brandenburg, the name from 11 70, is enlarged to the 
eastward and Neumark organized beyond the Oder, 
ii The Bavarian or Wittelsbach, to 1371, the Mark hav- 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 397 

ing escheated to Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria by the 
extinction of the Ascanian house. Misrule, war and 
disorder, Neumark lost for a time to the Poles, yet 
Brandenburg made an electorate by the Golden Bull in 
1356. iii The Luxemburg, to 1415, change this time 
occurring partly by negotiation, partly by conquest. 
Misrule and rebellion continue, Neumark sold to the 
Teutonic Order, iv The Hohenzollern. Elector Sigis- 
mund having become emperor in 1410, bargained his 
dignity and land to Frederic^ of Hohenzollern, the 
family which to-day rules Brandenburg-Prussia and the 
new German Empire. Prosperity now, Neumark re-pur- 
chased, territory acquired in all directions, indivisibility 
of the Mark decreed in 1473. Protestantism was intro- 
duced in 1539, and by Elector John Sigismund's mar- 
riage with the heiress of Preussen, that vast duchy 
became incorporated with Brandenburg in 1618.^ 

1 See Ch. V, § 2. Karl Great founded Halle on the Saale, Magdeburg 
and Blichen as defenses of his frontier against the Wends. Hamburg sub- 
sequently replaced BUchen in this office. 

^ Alt- Mittel- and Neumark are divisions still in use in Prussia, the first 
south and west of the Elbe from Magdeburg across to Priegnitz, the 
second between the Elbe and the Oder, and the third east of the Oder, 
north and south of the Warthe. 

^ On Henry the Fowler, Ch. V, § 7, This victorious campaign of his 
against the Wends occurred in the winter of 926-'7. 'Brandenburg' is a 
modification of the Wendic * Brannibor,' at first a town on the lower Havel. 

* So called from the cognizance upon his shield. Cf. Ch. V, § 17 and 
note 4. 

^ Frederic VI in the line of the Hohenzollern Burggraves of NUrnberg. 
He received Brandenburg in return for the influence and money used by 
him in securing Sigismund's election as emperor. The title ' Hohenzol- 
lern,' which this family subsequently received and still wears, is from their 
ancestral seat, on the heights of Zollern in the Swabian Alps. Emperor 



398 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

William is the 23d ruler of the line. On the early history of the Hohen- 
zoUerns in Brandenburg, Tuttle, iii. 

6 See Ch. V, § 17, n. 4, Ch. VII, §§ 16, n. i, 18, n. 5. Preussen was 
under Polish suzerainty however till the Peace of Oliva, 1660. Cf. § 4, 
and n. 4. On Preussen's early hist., Ranke, XII Biicher^ I, 2, 3, La- 
visse, 55-145. The original Preussen were not a Teutonic people at all 
hut Lithuanians, ' It is a curious freak of history, not unlike that which 
] as given the British name to the Teutonic and Gallic inhabitants of these 
[British] islands, that has transferred the name of this vanishing race to 
the greatest of modern German states.' — Bryce. 



§ 3 Its Rise to Statehood 

Tuttle, ii-iv. Treitschke, vol. i, 25 sqq. Droysen, Politik, pts. i, ii. Ranke, 
XII Bucher,\\; Memoirs, etc., bk. i. Za«c/2tf//^, as in bibliog. 

It was natural that the Brandenburgers, a composite 
race Saxon at basis, steeled and sharpened by colonial 
life, should excel their neighbors in war. Equally 
natural was their backwardness in civilization,^ whose 
progress among them had thrice, under Albert the Bear, 
at the Hohenzollern accession and after the Thirty 
Years' War, to begin from a dead halt. Still the Mark 
early developed political ambition and performance. 
The Ascanians designed a state that should rule the 
whole North, a thought whose realization the attain- 
ment of the electorship began. Frederic I led the 
Fiirsten in demanding reform for empire and church, 
Albert Achilles in reducing nobles and cities to obedi- 
ence, thus initiating a bold monarchical policy. End 
to private wars ^ and indivisibility of territory were here 
ordained earlier than in the empire at large. Govern- 
ment was indeed feebler after the third Hohenzollern,^ 
letting nobles and cities grow insolent and Saxony and 
the Palatinate lead in the Reformation and the Thirty 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 399 

Years' War. Yet the last event fell in precisely the 
half century which opened Brandenburg's greatness, 
i Cleve, Mark and Ravensberg* not only enlarged the 
state, gave it promising foothold in the West and en- 
riched and diversified its culture, but as outposts of 
protestantism toward Spain, France and Rome, rushed 
it into the vortex of great European politics, ii The 
adoption of Calvinism as the court religion while the 
Brandenburgers were Lutheran and many of the new 
subjects catholic, necessitated here a religious liberty 
worthy the Reformation, which made Brandenburg 
henceforth the head protestant state, iii Possession of 
Preussen, which was secularized church land ^ and out- 
side the empire,^ rent Brandenburg forever from the 
papacy and forced it into international relations on its 
own account. 

1 * Never did the church grow a saint from the sand of these northern 
marches. Rarely sounded a minnesong at the rude court of the Ascanian 
margraves. The diligent Cistercians of Lehnin looked more for fame as 
good farmers than for the crowns of art and learning.' — v. Treitschke. 

2 On the imperial peace, Ch. VIII, § 17. In Brandenburg the very 
first Hohenzollern ordained a Latidfrieden. 

^ The Hohenzollern electors of Brandenburg were Frederic I, i4i5-'40; 
Frederic II, i440-'70; Albert Achilles, i470-'86; John Cicero, i486-'99; 
Joachim I, 1499-1535; Joachim II [who introduced Lutheranism] , 1535 
-'71; John George, i57i-'98; Joachim Frederic, 1598- 1608; John Sigis- 
mund, i6o8-'i9; George William, i6i9-'40; Frederic William, the Great 
Elector, i640-'88; Frederic III, 1688-1701 [announces himself King 
Frederic I of Prussia in 1701 and rules as such till 171 3, still elector no 
less than before, as were all Prussia's kings till the empire ended, in 1806]. 

* See Ch. IX, § 7. Cleve had been a duchy, l^.Iark and Ravensberg 
counties. Note that ' Mark ' is in this case a proper name. Vienna and 
Madrid regarded themselves defeated when these districts passed to a 
protestant power, which thus came so near to Cologne, Rome's tower of 
Strength in the empire. *The young state embraced upon its 24,000 



400 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

square miles of territory nearly all the contrasts, topographical, ecclesiasti- 
cal and socio-political, which were tilling the empire with vocal strife. It 
bestrode the German lands with spread legs like the Colossus of Rhodes, 
planting its feet upon the threatened marches of the Rhine westward and 
of the Memel eastward.' — v. Treitschke. This position in West Germany 
also brought Brandenburg into the important alliance with the House of 
Orange [Holland] in its war against Louis XIV, i672-'8 [§ 4 and notes]. 

5 It was a Hohenzollern Grand Master, Albert of Brandenburg, who in 
1525 by Luther's advice secularized the territory of the Order, becoming 
duke of Prussia under Polish suzerainty. The entire duchy consisted of 
secularized ecclesiastical land, and was the largest tract of the kind which 
the church had possessed. Albert was excommunicated and put to the 
ban of the empire. Incorporation of this estate of course placed Branden- 
burg forever at feud with Rome. Ch. VI, § 18, n. 5. 

^ Many writers seem not to understand that the union of old Preussen 
with Brandenburg did not bring this territory into the empire. It at no 
time formed part of the empire. 

§ 4 The Great Elector 

Tuttle, iv-vii. Lewis, ch. xxi. Ranke, Memoirs, etc., bk. i; XII Biicher, III. 
Lavisse, 195-244. Droysen, Politik, III, 2, 3. 

The new status took shape in the time, 1644-88, of 
the justly so called * Great Elector,' who forms with 
Frederic II and Bismarck the immortal triumvirate of 
epoch-makers in Prussian history. Less conscientious 
or benevolent, he was in war and diplomacy comparable 
with either of his kinsmen, Gustavus Adolphus or Fred- 
eric Henry of Orange.^ Fehrbellin^ and Warsaw* 
proved him a master in strategy, tactics and valor. His 
combined assurance and address in the Congress of 
Westphalia, mean and vacillating as his father's course 
had been in the War, secured him Far Pomerania and 
the ecclesiastical states of Magdeburg, Camin, Minden 
and Halberstadt. Fore Pomerania he won splendidly 
with the sword,^ though forced by the treachery of his 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 4OI 

allies to retrocede it subsequently. By playing off 
Sweden and Poland against each other he made himself 
over Preussen a fully sovereign prince. Best, he greatly 
consolidated his straggling realm, which partly excuses 
his absolutism in roughly displacing rude parliamentary 
institutions by personal rule. Worthful as well were the 
new life, the modern and independent German spirit 
which he infused. He mocked at the empire's effete 
medisevalism, single-handed braved Louis XIV, and 
severely taught his diets and subjects not to look 
abroad^ for aid. His wise policy in religion exalted 
Brandenburg as the protestant Holy Land. While each 
of the other states in the empire made some one con- 
fession dominant, barely tolerating dissenters, this gave 
the three an absolute parity,'' at the same time offering 
full freedom of faith to all subjects. Religious refugees 
thronged in, Jews and Bohemian brethren from the 
Austrian lands, twenty thousand Huguenots from 
France. At Frederic the Great's death nearly a third 
of Prussia's population were descendants of such immi- 
grants. 

1 Very many of the acts of this great man cannot be defended. Tuttle 
well shows this, rebuking the weak adulation of Prussian panegyrists. But 
T. does not enough take into account the benefits that arose from unifying 
the different parts of Prussia, and the importance to this of the elector's 
absolutist course. Perusal of v. Treitschke and Tuttle together gives a 
very correct idea. The diets gotten rid of by the elector were not of a 
popular nature and the weal of the people was furthered rather than 
lessened by their fate. 

2 Gustavus was his uncle, Frederic Henry his great-uncle and his father- 
in-law. William III of England was his second cousin and also nephew 
to his first queen, Louise of Orange. On his death-bed the Great Elector 
planned with William the campaign to England which was to make him 
king the next year. The Great Elector should, in estimates of his spirit ?s 



402 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

a ruler, be credited with this crusade against absohitism. He fought abso- 
lutism too in Louis XIV. 

3 In 1675, during Louis XIV's war with Holland [Ch. X, § 2, n.], the 
Swedes, allies of Louis, invaded Brandenburg. The elector hastened 
from the Rhine, where he commanded the allies, routed the Swedes in this 
battle, against great odds, and rapidly wrested from them every foot of the 
land which the P. of Westphalia [Ch. IX, § 17] had left them, including 
Stettin, the 'virgin' city, never conquered before. Meantime Holland, 
Spain and the emperor had hastened to make peace [Nymwegen, 1678] 
with Louis, leaving Brandenburg alone to fight France and Sweden. 
Hence in the P. of St. Germain, 1679, the elector was forced to give back 
to Sweden all that he had taken save a small strip on the right Oder-bank. 
In signing this humiliating treaty he is said to have cried out : Exoriare 
aliqiiis nostris ex ossibus ultor [Aeneid, IV, 625], which * ultor ' modern 
Prussians see in Bismarck. The elector showed his usual sagacity in 
yielding Fore Pomerania instead of letting Louis keep the Prussian Rhine- 
lands, as it would be easier by and by to displace the Swede than the 
Frenchman. 

* In 1656, the decisive battle in the long strife of John Casimir, king 
of Poland, for the Swedish throne. The elector fought on Sweden's side 
but refused to follow up the victory. Poland was humbled, and the death 
in 1660 of the victorious Swedish king, Charles Gustavus, saved Branden- 
burg from Sweden's vengeance. The Peace of Oliva, i66o, confirmed the 
elector's full sovereignty in Preussen. 

^ See n. 3. In spite of this loss the realm was nearly trebled in size 
under John Sigismund and the Great Elector, increasing from 11,440 
square miles to 32,208. The Great Elector established Prussian colonies 
in Africa [short-lived], and a small but efficient navy. 

'^ The diet of Preussen sought aid from Poland [declining to recognize 
the transfer of sovereignty], that of Brandenburg from Austria, that of 
Cleve from Holland. The elector cowed all of them into submission, the 
last general diet of Brandenburg being in 1653. He did not formally 
annihilate them. They were simply ignored and not summoned. On his 
cruel treatment of Rhode and Kalkstein in Preussen, Tuttle, 189 sqq., has 
excellent remarks. 

' The earliest state in Europe to do this. It was first matter of necessity, 
then became and has remained a principle of Prussian statecraft. The 
Huguenots came before and at the revocation of the Nantes edict, 1685. 
They furnished a large fraction of Prussia's intellectual aristocracy for a 
century. Brandenburg resounded with the hymn, 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 4O3 

* Deiii Volk das sonst itn Finstern sass, 
Von Irrtkum gatiz mitgcben, 
Dasfindet hier tiun sein Gelass 
Und darf in Freiheit leben' 

§ 5 The First Two Kings 

Tuitle, vii-xi. Treitsckke, vol. i, 35-48. Ranke, Memoirs, etc., bk. il; 
XII Bucher, IV-VI. Droysen, Poiitik, IV, 1-3. 

Frederic I and Frederic William I were not attrac- 
tive characters, the one weak and vain, the other savage, 
mean and narrow, and neither was inspired with the 
slightest foregleam of Prussia's destiny. Yet partly 
through, partly in spite of them the land continued to 
advance in all the elements of able statehood. Its pro- 
motion to the rank of a kingdom ^ increased its moral 
and political weight in Europe. Much territory ^ was 
acquired, including Stettin and a goodly reach of Baltic 
coast. Public education was improved, the Academy 
of Arts and of Sciences^ established, and the intel- 
lectual movement well begun which was to make Prus- 
sia instead of the catholic South the German centre for 
art and letters. In particular : i Prussia's hegemony 
in the corpus ev angelic or mn was emphasized and con- 
firmed by her bold and constant opposition to Louis 
XIV, and by Frederic William's welcome to the Salz- 
burg exiles* with intervention on their behalf. 2 Her 
military establishment was enlarged and improved, the 
splendid corps left by the Great Elector having slowly 
but surely grown to be the best disciplined and every 
way most formidable body of troops in Europe outside 
of France.^ 3 More significant than all was the inner 
political strength which the state had acquired. The 
government if absolute was paternal. The Mercantile 



404 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

System^ had been introduced and allodial substituted 
for the feudal ^ tenure of land. A Prussian feeUng verg- 
ing toward enthusiasm had percolated through the 
remotest sections of the population. Prussia was more 
and more thought of at home and abroad as no longer a 
member of the empire but as its peer.^ Economy kept 
its exchequer well filled, and an exact and laborious 
administration ^ was founding the unrivalled fame which 
the Prussian civil service still enjoys. 

1 In 1 701, Elector Frederic III becoming King Frederic I. He lived 
and ruled till 171 3. The succession of Prussian monarchs since has been : 
Frederic William I, i7i3-'40; Frederic II [the Great], i740-'86; Fred- 
eric William II, 1786-97; Frederic William III, 1797-1840; Frederic 
William IV, i840-'6i; William I, 1861-. The pope would not recognize 
the change to kingdom and the papal state-calendar a hundred years later 
knew only margraves of Brandenljurg. The Saxon elector became king 
of Poland, 1697, but had to turn catholic therefor. This made the king of 
Prussia more visibly the foremost protestant magnate. 

2 Frederic I obtained Quedlinburg, Tecklenburg, Mors and Lingen in 
West Germany, and Neufchatel in Switzerland. Prussia was now about at 
Bavaria's, Saxony's or Hannover's level of power. Frederic Wm. I 
secured a part of Guelders [Holland] at the Peace of Utrecht, 171 3, and 
at that of Stockholm, 1720, Fore Pomerania to the River Peene, with 
Stettin and the islands Usedom and Wollin. 

^ The Academy of Arts, 1696, the Acad, of Sciences, Leibnitz at its 
head, in 1700. Frederic I and still more his QiPeen, Sophie Charlotte, 
truly befriended these institutions for higher culture. Not so Frederic 
Wm. I, who was a boor. Yet he was the monarch who first made elemen- 
tary education compulsory in Prussia. 

* Driven from the Salzburg district by the cruelty of the catholic arch- 
bishop. Baron Firmian, 1731. Nearly the same inhumanity was used as in 
Bohemia in i620-'2i [Ch. IX, § n]. The king of Prussia very boldly 
expostulated, at the same time offering the exiles all facilities for settlement 
in his lands. Tuttle, 411 sqq. Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea has im- 
mortalized this pathetic history, as Longfellow's Evangeline has that of the 
French exodus from the Basin of Minns. 

s * They had held Eugene's right on the day of Blenheim, had looked 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 405 

destruction calmly in the face at Cassano, had stormed over and over again 
the deadly trenches of Malplaquet, had indeed campaigned all over 
Europe in the service of foreign states.' — Tuttle. 

^ Of which Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV, was the foremost 
champion. The central ideas of the system were (i) to discourage im- 
ports, making eacli land as far as possible dependent on its own resources 
alone, and (ii) to export only for money, and in all ways to provide the 
country with the greatest possible hoard uf money. Incidental to (i) was 
the furtherance of home manufactures. On this see Adam Smith's Wealth 
of Nations, bk. iv. 

7 See Ch. VI, § 7, Tuttle, 391 sq. This left the feudal system exactly 
as before except as to the relations between the king and his immediate 
vassals. The same change occurred in England under Charles II. 

^ Under Frederic I Prussia was still the humble, dutiful servant of 
Austria and the empire. The rivalry of the two states begins under Fred. 
Wm. II. He had learned of Austria's treachery and charged his son to 
avenge him. For this purpose he left him a well-filled treasury and an 
army of 85,000 men. Prussia was then not higher than the 12th European 
state in population or territory, yet 4th in military power. Frederic the 
Great secured the privilege de non appellando, freeing Prussia from all 
connection with imperial courts. 

^ v. Treitschke believes that no statesman of modern times, Napoleon I 
and Freiherr von Stein aside, has equalled Frederic William I as an 
organizer. 

§ 6 Frederic the Great 

Lewis, chaps, xxii, xxiii. Carlyle, Frederic the Gt. Macaulay, Essay on do. Duruy, 
TeMiJ>s Modernes, ch xv. Treitschke, vol. i, 49-70. Ranke, Memoirs, etc., bks. 
iii sqq. ; XII Bucher, VII sqq. Droysen, Politik, V sqq. 

Now came to the throne a genius, who saw as no 
Hohenzollern before, the vanity of the old empire, the 
hypocrisy and despotism of Austria, the irrepressible 
conflict between it and Prussia, the latter's mission ulti- 
mately to form the Fatherland anew, and the certainty 
that force would be required to accomplish this. Fred- 
eric's life-work, fully successful, was to enlarge and 
exalt Prussia and to secure to her full place and recog- 



406 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

nition among the great powers.^ Important incidental 
results of it were : i The initial humiliation ^ of Aus- 
tria. 2 Strength to freedom of religious confession 
still menaced by Rome. Parity of faiths in the empire 
must have remained a myth so long as only Austria and 
France contested the supremacy. Frederic was thus 
the Maccabaeus^ of protestantism, his victories filling 
pope and Jesuits with despair. 3 Preparation for a 
more worthy central government in Germany by and by. 
Frederic deemed it as yet too early to crush the empire, 
but wished to germanize and reform it, by transferring 
its crown to Bavaria* and incorporating its smallest 
states with the larger and efficient ones. In this he 
failed, through the craft of Austria and the might of ' 
conservative, particularist and ecclesiastical prejudice. 
But he made Germany ashamed of its petty govern- 
ments and of foreign domination. He shook confidence 
in Austria, increased it in simple DeiitscJithum. In his 
wars Frederic represented the German national con- 
sciousness. He fought for German interests, not for 
foreign. His miraculous victories were deeds of Ger- 
man valor, and stimulated the national pride to its 
depths. Mainly to this was due the sense of German 
national unity which has shaped all European history 
since, and also the incomparable intellectual revival 
which raised up Kant, Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, 
Goethe and Schiller. Another benign influence of this 
memorable reign was that it lifted the level of life at all 
German courts, inspiring rulers with new sense of duty, 
new regard for the public weal.^ Austria itself was 
regenerated by it. 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 407 

1 Silesia was the only territory secured to Prussia by his wars, but dur- 
ing the reign east Friesland, part of Mansfeid, West-Preussen, except 
Danzig and Thorn, and the so-called Netz-district of Poland proper became 
Prussian, the last two being added by the first partition of Poland, 1772, 
We have no space for a full account of Frederic's wars but must refer to 
Carlyle, Oncken, Zeitalter Fried, d. Grossen, 2 v.. Wolf, Oesterreich un- 
ier M. Theresia, etc., Arneth, Gesch. Maria Theresias, 10 v.. Due de 
Broglie, Fred. II and Maria Theresa, 2 v., Droysen, Abhandlungen, Bieder- 
mann, Deutschland im xviiiten Jahrh., Raumer, Contributions to H., vol. ii, 
Duncker, Atis. d. Zeit Fr. d. Grossen u. Fr. Wms. III. Schafer, Gesch. d. 
7 j'dhr. Krieges, 2 v., is the standard on the 7 Years' W. Grlinhagen of 
Breslau, an able pupil of Droysen, has written on the First Silesian W., 
and is writing on the Second. With the above may be consulted Koser, 
Fr. d. Grosse als Kronprinz^ Oncken, Beitrage zu neueren Gesch., and 
V. Sybel's Zeiischrift for 1859 and 1886. Cf. also Adams, Manual, 273 sq. 
Frederic began the First Silesian W., 1 740-'2, upon his own account, but 
after the League of Nymphenburg against Austria, May, 1741, on the 
part of France, Spain, Bavaria, Saxony and Prussia, it lapses into the 
general W. of the Austrian Succession, to break emperor Charles VI's 
Pragmatic Sanction, honor the Salic law, and place Charles Albert of 
Bavaria against Maria Theresa in possession of the Austrian crown. In 
1742 Frederic recedes from this alliance and makes peace with Maria 
Theresa on condition of retaining Silesia, but seeing Austria victorious and 
allying herself with Sardinia and Saxony, he in 1746 joins France and 
Bavaria again and begins the Second Silesian W., i744-'5, against Austria, 
Saxony, England and Holland, another phase of the W. for the Austrian 
Succession. This question is, however, settled by Charles Albert's death 
in Jan., 1745, and in Dec. Prussia concludes with Austria the Peace of 
Dresden, still retaining Silesia. The other powers fight till the Peace of 
Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. Maria Theresa had no intention even now of per- 
manently relinquishing her lost provinces, yearly gathering resources and 
forming alliances for a fresh struggle, which came in the terrible Seven 
Years' War, oftener called by the Prussians the Third Silesian, i756-'63. 
In 1755 Austria had succeeded in entirely isolating Frederic, but in June 
of that year the French and English in America opened hostilities [French 
and Indian War, i755-'63], which withdrew England from the French- 
Austrian-Russian alliance into one with Frederic. It aided him compara- 
tively little. In 1757 Austria, France, Russia and Sweden even arranged 
to partition Prussia, Notwithstanding miracles of generalship and valor 
by Frederic, his officers and his men, on fields like Rossbach, Leuthen and 



408 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

Minden, they must have succumbed but for the death of Elizabeth of 
Russia, which transferred the forces of that nation [Peter III] to Prussia's 
side. The Peace of Hubertsburg, Feb, 15, 1763, closed Frederic's great 
military career, though he took part in the nearly bloodless war over the 
Bavarian Succession, lyyS-'g. 

2 A century earlier north Germany required 30 years to beat Austria 
with Fuance's and Sweden's aid. Now Frederic almost alone did it thrice 
in succession, occupying in all less than half that time. Had both sides 
been alone, the weakness of Austria in the comparison would have been 
more apparent still. Of the 850,000 men computed to have perished in 
the 7 Yrs.' W., about 180,000 fell in Prussia's service, and her population 
decreased in these years by half a million. 

^ So was he named by English dissenters. The pope on his side sent 
a consecrated hat and sword to the Austrian Marshal Daun, who had acci- 
dentally beaten Frederic once at Hochkirch. 

* See n. i. This was Frederic's hope in taking part in the War for the 
Austrian Succession. Austria's spirit had not changed since the 30 Years' 
War. She still fought for Rome, still summoned hordes of foreigners to 
shed protestant and German blood on imperial soil. Yet how fully he 
conceived Prussia's German mission as this later unfolded, or deserves 
credit for truly German patriotism, is matter of doubt. Prussian writers 
probably overestimate his merit in this regard; Bryce, 406 sq., underesti- 
mates it rather. 

^ Frederic the Great's absolutism is not for a moment to be compared 
with the unqualified selfishness of a Louis XV. It was a prime maxim 
with him that government exists only for the good of the governed, that 
the monarch is only the foremost servant of the state. This view spread 
to his adorers, the princes and princelings of the empire. Joseph II, who 
succeeded Maria Theresa in Austria, was an enthusiastic imitator of the 
great Prussian, introducing beneficent reforms of all sorts in church and 
state, to which Austria's tenacity of life against Napoleon was greatly 
owing. Strange to say, some of the best ideas of the French Revolution 
itself proceeded from Frederic the Great. 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 4O9 



§ 7 Napoleon's Heel 

Lewis, ch. xxiv. Treitschke, bk. i, 2. Weber, II, 496-516. Sorel, 'Decadence de 
la Prusse apres Fred. //', Rev. des deux Mondes, Jan., 1883. Ranke, An- 
sprung, u. Beginn d:Rev.-KrieRe,\-j<^\,'-2\ Hardenberg, bks. i-iii. Seeley,^X.€\x\, 
pt. ii. Segur, Hist., etc., of Reign of Fred. Wm. II, 3 v. 

But for the present the rest of Germany partook these 
benefits more than Prussia, which even before Frederic's 
death began to decline. The wars had left it in dis- 
tressing poverty, which the Mercantilism ^ persisted in 
by the king increased faster than his Spartan economy 
diminished it. In administration he was not his father's 
peer. Even the army fell off in organization and morale. 
If defects in the judiciary were reformed, evils equally 
important were neglected in other fields. The aristoc- 
racy was petted, the serfs not freed. Government was 
too paternal, too personal. Wont to supervise every- 
thing himself the king created no power of initiative or 
automatism in state or officials. Worst, his successor, 
Frederic William II, was a pigmy, during whose years 
upon the throne the very foundations fixed by the Great 
Frederic were undermined, Prussian national pride laid 
low, the lead surrendered again to Austria. There was 
failure in diplomacy .^ Cant in religion was rewarded,^ 
candor persecuted. The last two partitions * of Poland 
were against Prussia's and the world's conscience, and 
troubled the realm with a refractory ethnic element, 
both Slavic and catholic. When the French Revolution 
opened everything favored^ the complete subjection of 
Austria to Prussia, but the precious chance was lost. 
Fierce as the king was to quash the French Republic, 
one dash of its raw army forced him to peace, with the 



410 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

loss of trans-Rhenish Prussia entire. In all its dealings 
with Napoleon till the merited fate came, the Berlin 
court showed indolence, indecision, insincerity. And 
so far as Frederic William III, stripped of half his lands 
and mulcted a half billion francs, at last excelled his 
father he owed it to patriotic goading by Stein and the 
people.^ 

1 See § 5, n. 6. 

2 By Austria, e.g., at the Congress of Reichenbach, 1790, where Leo- 
pold II artfully led Frederic Wm. to give up promising schemes of acqui- 
sition in the Austrian Netherlands [Belgium] in return for a barren 
promise that Austria would push its Turkish conquests no further. Fred. 
Wm. wasted money in a foolish campaign against Holland in 1797. How 
stupid too his zeal for Polish land, his ready relaxation of grip upon his 
beautiful trans- Rhenish domains ! The 10 yrs. from the P. of Basel, 1795, 
are among the darkest in Prussian history : economy, order, justice gone 
from the administration, army weakened by ill discipline and a disaffected 
Polish element, treasury exhausted, no patriotism among upper classes. 

^ WoUner, Frederic Wm.'s minister, devoted to reaction in theology, 
uttered an edict in 1 788, abrogating the freedom of thought and the press 
so perfect under the great P^ederic, commanding the clergy whether 
believing them or not, to propound the ancient doctrines approved at 
court, under penalty of deposition or worse. This law was set aside in the 
next reign. 

* The first partition, under Frederic the Great, 1772 [Ch. X, § 3, n. 6] 
gave Prussia land and [German] population which naturally belonged to 
her, and was thus relatively justified. Not so the second and third. But 
the internal disorders of Poland furnished a fair excuse even for these. 

^ The Revolution would end PVance's alliance with Austria, the latter's 
troops were engaged in a far campaign against the Turks, the Czarina was 
in close treaty with Prussia. Nor would attack then upon Austria neces- 
sarily have weakened, it might greatly have strengthened, Germany's 
position in face of Napoleon subsequently, v, Treitschke, vol. i, 109. 

6 Just so Bryce, 409 sq. 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 4II 



§ 8 Resurrection 

Lewis, chaps, xxvii-xxx. Ranke, Hardenberg, bk. iv. Treitschke, bk. i, 2-5. Weber, 
II, 541-61. Dticoudray, Hist. Conteniporaine, 196-400. Weir, ch. v. Pertz, 
Stein. Seeley, do. 

In the process of isolating, tantalizing and grinding 
Prussia Napoleon was as adroit as the Berlin court was 
dull.^ Yet the very brilliancy of this success begot his 
defeat at last. In Prussia as nowhere else his sway was 
pure, crushing burden, his purpose to enslave trans- 
parent, and as he could not here kill out the German 
and national spirit, irresistible reaction resulted. Prus- 
sia, chief sufferer, not Austria, became the leader in 
Germany's redemption, thus gaining incalculable and 
permanent vantage as the centre of DeiUschtJium. The 
years from 1806 to 18 12 are morally the grandest in all 
Prussian history. The efficient organizers of the revi- 
val were Stein and Scharnhorst, two of the patriotic 
Germans who had flocked to Prussia from other states.^ 
Stein, believing that domestic bondage must be ended 
before the foreign could be, set out to rebuild socially 
from the bottom. The serfs were freed, nobles' privi- 
leges and many monopolies abolished, self-government 
restored to cities, the trades removed from guild-domi- 
nation.^ Public burdens, distributed more justly, were 
borne more cheerfully. Scharnhorst reformed the army 
in like manner, putting into it native Prussians * only, 
to be treated humanely and honorably, with arms and 
drill simple and efficient. His plan of filling and drill- 
ing the permitted quota and then emptying it to give 
place to more recruits,^ turned the whole male popula- 
tion into trained soldiery, wherein merit and service, 



412 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

not social position, secured promotion. In these and 
other ways inspired patriotism came to pervade clergy, 
universities, schools^ and literature, as well as the 
masses of the people. For years restrained only with 
difficulty, after Vittoria and Napoleon's retreat from 
Moscow the awful zeal for freedom burst all bonds. 
Led by men like Bliicher, Gneisenau, Yorck^ and Biilow 
Prussia's soldiers sought the front on every battle-field, 
fighting like tigers. Their spirit was contagious, and 
the oppressor crossed the Rhine chased by huge armies 
from states which yesterday acquiesced or even gloried 
in French rule as a blessing. 

1 Partly her own pride, partly Napoleon's management led Prussia to 
take so mean and crooked a course that other nations were offended at her. 
Her fall awoke little pity. Too ready to go Austria's ways before the war, 
now in the hour of woe to all Germany, alliance with Vienna was shunned 
as deadly. Had Prussia cooperated in the Austerlitz campaign, 1805, 
Napoleon might have been crushed. Not even the high-handed seizure 
of Hannover by the French in 1803 could rouse the sleepy Frederic Wm. 
III. In 1805 he even accepted from Napoleon the Hannover so recently 
plucked from England, his ally. Erection of the Rhein-Bund and the 
restoration of Hannover to Eng. awoke him, yet without duly arousing 
him. Tilsit stripped him of all his kingdom west of the Elbe and also of 
all the Poland acquired by the second and third partitions. Cf. Bryce, 
407 sq. 

2 Stein was a Nassauer, Scharnhorst a Hannoverian. Besides these, 
Bliicher and Fichte of the men influential in Prussia at this crisis were 
from outside. Scharnhorst was wounded May 2, 1813, in the battle near 
Llitzen, yet continued active and made his wound fatal, June 28. 

^ Under the Great Elector most towns gave up the subsidy-system of 
paying taxes, granting him a permanent excise. This made him independ- 
ent. As nobles and prelates still paid the Bede \^Bitte, 'request'] or 
subsidy, sympathy between them and the burghers died out. Royal tax- 
officers became the main officials of towns. Nobles paid their taxes by 
grinding their serfs. In 1807 Stein promulgated an edict abolishing serf- 
dom, and also the legal distinction of classes, establishing freedom of ex- 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 413 

change in land and free choice of occupation by all. In 1808 he issued 
anotlier, restoring self-government to the cities, only the head official of 
each to be appointed by king, from three nominees presented by the 
citizens. Stein's reforms, so far as they went, were almost exactly those 
of the opening French Revolution [Ch. X, §§ ii, 12J. He based his 
acceptance of office on the condition that there should be no more an 
irresponsible cabinet, but responsible ministers, to counsel the king and be 
his executive agents. His intention was ultimately to give Prussia Eng- 
land's parliamentary system, but his work was cut short. A letter of his 
[Seeley, pt. iv, ch. v] betraying his wish to rid Germany of the French 
yoke reached Napoleon, and, to relieve Prussia from a conflict which 
would then have been premature, he gave up his place as Prussian minis- 
ter, Nov. 24, 1808, fleeing first to Austria, then to Russia. Napoleon in a 
sounding manifesto denounced to the world ' a man by the name of Stein ' 
as a stirrer of revolt against the French empire. It was Stein who induced 
Czar Alexander, when Russia was invaded, to ignore Napoleon's offers to 
negotiate. Hardenberg took up Stein's reforms in 1 810, giving each 
peasant the fee simple of part of the estate to which he had belonged. 
Seeley's Stein, pts. iii-v. 

4 I.e., as private soldiers, the system of employing mercenaries being 
abandoned. 

s See Ch. X, § 19, Seeley's Stein, pt. iv, ch. iv. 

^ The educational reforms of Wm. v. Humboldt had established the 
Prussian school system on its present basis, and in 1809 the University of 
Berlin was founded. 

'' On Blucher and Gneisenau, Ch. X, § 19 and n. 6. Yorck died fight- 
ing in the streets of Paris^ being among the first to enter after Waterloo. 
Surrounded by French chasseurs and bidden to surrender, * My name is 
Yorck ' \^ich heisse Yorck'\ was all he would reply, rushed upon them and 
fell. Droysen has an able Life of this heroic officer \_Leben d. Feldmar- 
schalls Graf en York von Wartenburg, 3 v]. 



§ 9 The Continental Gerrymander of 1815 

Treitschke, bk. ii, i. Weber, II, 553 sqq. Ranke, Hardenberg. Flathe, as in bibliog. 
Weir, ch. v. Pertz, Stein, vol. ii. Seeley, do., pt. viii. Alison, ch. xxvii. 

The old empire^ and Napoleon's gone, Germany 
needed a new constitution, preparation of which was 



414 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

the chief work of the Congress of Vienna, famous for 
so many reasons. ^ Prussia had brought from the war 
new zeal for a united Fatherland, and her envoys came 
to Vienna to urge a national policy. In vain. Prussia's 
sacrifices had awakened jealousy instead of gratitude. 
The heads of the RJieiii-Bund states in particular, 
' satraps of Napoleonism,' entered the Congress sworn 
to weaken, *in the interest of German freedom,' the 
only state that had shown power and will to defend 
Germany. Herein they were at one with Metternich, 
master spirit of the Assembly, who possessed the art to 
bring all to his view. His policy favored (i) death to 
revolutionary ideas, (2) aid to the Turks against Russia, 
an aim which gave him England and Hannover, and (3) 
division and impossibility of union in both Italy and 
Germany.^ Prussia was to be made as small and weak 
as possible, even France to be favored rather than she, 
and a cordon of separate but not too feeble states to 
remain in Central and South Germany, kept satellites 
to Austria by assiduous courting. This plan in the 
main prevailed and is mirrored in the loose constitution * 
of the Confederation which the Congress established. 
Of the Prussian diplomatists present, none of them able, 
Hardenberg led, but weakened Prussia's suit by at first 
siding with Metternich' s Turkish policy against Russia, 
and by insisting upon the size^ rather than upon the 
quality and position of the acquisitions he demanded. 
But if Prussia gained in territory less than she hoped, 
fortunately the increment which she did receive pre- 
served her unity, while her moral advantage from the 
great struggle, in elevation of national enthusiasm at 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 415 

home and in the public opinion of the world, exceeded 
that of any other continental power. 

1 The Holy Roman Empire ended in 1806, when emperor Francis II 
renounced his crown. It had amounted to nothing since 1 801, date of 
the Peace of Luneville. Francis had already in 1804 announced himself 
as emperor Francis I of Austria, in which character he remained till his 
death in 1835. The more liberal spirits in the congress wished to restore, 
modified, the ancient empire, but Metternich's decisive influence was 
thrown against this. Cf. § 12, n. 2. 

2 Here originated the system of relegating the weightiest affairs of 
European politics to the great powers for decision, which has since be- 
come a recognized part of international law. A lively sense now first 
began to be manifested in Europe's common interests. Certain very valu- 
able forms and rules for international intercourse date from this congress. 
Many new agreements were here set in train for the free navigation of 
great rivers having an international character. ' The business policy of 
the 1 8th century had as its fundamental principle that one nation's gain is 
another's loss. Now for the first time a European treaty appealed to the 
doctrine of the new political economy, that the alleviation of commerce is 
for the common interest of all peoples.' — v. Treitschke. The powers 
united to do away with the slave trade. New attention was directed to 
the rights of foreigners resident in any land. In a word this congress 
was an epoch in international law, and private international law may be 
said to have had here its birth, as public at the Congress of Westphalia 
[Ch. IX, § 17, n. 7]. 

3 Cf. Ch. X, § 20. Italy was divided nearly as in 1795, before the 
Napoleonic invasion, Venetia and Lombardy being united into a kingdom, 
subject to Austria. Germany was restored to nearly the figure of 1803, 
incorporating the petty principalities, counties and baronies in the larger 
states. Prussia obtained the valued Posen-district of Poland, its eastern 
and southeastern line running as now, also, in the west, all that had been 
lost by the Peaces of Tilsit and Basel, and beyond the Rhine about 
Cologne considerably more, viz., the electoral territories of Cologne and 
Treves, the city of Aix-la-Chapelle, and pieces of Luxemburg and Lim- 
burg. Pomerania and about half of Saxony also passed to Prussia. The 
entire Bund now constituted embraced 38 states in all: I empire, Austria; 
5 kingdoms, Prussia, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Saxony and Hannover; i elec- 
torate, Hessen-Kassel [the term now of course purely conventional and 



4l6 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

devoid of its old meaning] ; 7 grand-duchies, Baden, Hessen-Darmstadt, 
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Saxe-Weimar, Luxemburg 
and Oldenburg; 9 duchies, Meiningen, Koburg-Gotha, Altenburg, Dessau, 
Kothen, Bernburg, Nassau, Brunswick and Holstein; 10 Furstenihuiner, 
the landgraviat of Hessen-Homburg, and the 4 free cities of Frankfort, 
Hamburg, Bremen and LUbeck. — Weber, II, 555, Fischer, N'ation u. 
Bundestag [1880], Kaltenborn, Gesch. d. d. Bundesverh'dltnisse, etc., 
Abschn. ii, iii. This division was ' characterised by a disregard of popular 
rights, of differences of race and religion and of historical tradition, worthy 
of Napoleon in his most absolute days. Europe was treated as if it were 
a blank map which might be divided simply into arbitrary districts of so 
many square miles and so many inhabitants.' BlUcher wrote to his old 
friend Ruchel, 'The good Vienna Congress resembles an annual fair, 
whither every farmer drives his cattle to sell or to exchange.' Gorres com- 
plained of ' the heartless statistical system ' of the Vienna diplomatists. 

^ Diet with one representative from each state, to sit at Frankfort, an 
Austrian plenipotentiary for president. Diet to settle all disputes between 
states, each of which was forbidden to make war on any of the rest, or 
alliances unfavorable to them. There was to be a Bund-army of 300,000 
men, and the Bund was to make war and treaties. Cf. § 16, n. 6. 

^ In view of her immense sacrifices : 140,000 men since the beginning 
of 181 3, Prussia pressed for the whole of the grand-duchy of Warsaw 
[Poland], all Saxony and all Lothringen. These possessions would have 
given her a most heterogeneous population, and probably retarded her 
progress in national cliaracter and spirit, so that her foes in refusing 
such extension really did her a kindness. The settlement left the king- 
dom indeed not quite so large as in 1806: 108,000 sq. miles to 122,- 
000, but the exchange of Slavic for German population and the westward 
shifting of the centre of gravity more than compensated. In these felici- 
tous conditions Prussia possessed a far richer promise of the future head- 
ship of Germany than did Austria in her new Italian dominion. 



§ 10 Metternichismus 

Muller, i~go. Fischer, Nation 71. Bundestag,\>V.v\\\. Treiischke,v<A%.'\\,\\\. Weir, 
ch. vi. i'i'^/^jj/, Stein, pt. ix, ^/zw«, ch. xxvii. Flathe , zs, 'va.\i^\\o%. Fyffe,\\,\\. 

The new Bund was ruled, no less than it had been 
created, as Austria's and Metternich's tool, to make 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 417 

Germany, Prussia included, the vassal of Hapsburg, and 
to stay the advance of liberalism. The presence of the 
French in Germany, reminding of the Republic, had 
quickened and generalized the wish for constitutional 
rule, the hatred of personal. While peril lasted, the 
powers heeded. Czar Alexander received Poland on 
condition of granting it a constitution, Frederic William 
promised Prussia a constitution, article xiii of the Bund- 
acts declared that each of the confederate states was to 
have a constitution with representation. Liberals fully 
expected that ere long constitutionalism would prevail 
on the continent as in England. Bitter disappointment 
awaited this hope, the next period being but a record of 
Metternich's triumphs, of monarchs' mean devices to 
evade their pledges and hush the popular cry.^ Except 
Saxe-Weimar^ not a state of the Bund obtained a truly 
liberal ground-law. Bavaria, Wiirttemberg and Baden, 
which had felt France most, had charters by 1820, but 
these modified absolutism only a little, and were given 
partly to spite the larger states, surrendering to reac- 
tion. In the North the aristocracy, powerful and igno- 
rant, would yield naught of its old privileges, nor con- 
sider any constitution but the antique one of estates, 
which gave the middle and lower classes no audible 
voice. In Austria the path of constitutional movement 
was blocked utterly. And the privileges which were 
conceded elsewhere were vitally vitiated by appearing 
as grants, not as rights. All seeking by the people to 
wrest concessions was viewed as Jacobinism, with Reign 
of Terror behind. Press, pulpit, school ^ and platform 
were under gag-laws, patriots executed, exiled or silenced 



41 8 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

by an infamous system of espionage, which Napoleon 
would have blushed to own. The Bund-diet became 
the agent of tyranny, its lethargy and weakness its sole 
redeeming features. 

1 Poland received her constitution, a liberal one, revoked however in 
1830, when the czar put down the Polish rebellion and made 'order reign 
in Warsaw.' The king of Prussia utterly belied his solemn pledge, after 
having even gone so far as to name the limit of time within which a com- 
mission should meet to draft the promised instrument. Prussia thus 
squandered another inestimable opportunity to assume the first place 
among the German states. The Rhenish Mercury, which called for the 
fulfilment of the engagement, was suppressed. The same offence cost 
Arndt and the brothers Welcker their Bonn professorships with imprison- 
ment, and exiled Gorres and Jahn. In Saxony, Mecklenburg, Hannover, 
Brunswick and Oldenburg aristocratic government went on after the erec- 
tion of the Bund just as before, 

2 Nassau received in 1814 a constitution worthy the name, but it was 
not set in exercise till 181 8, and was then to a great extent neutralized by 
the administration. Karl-August, the grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar, in 
May, 1 81 6, acting with the estates, granted a genuinely democratic ground- 
law, providing for the representation of all citizens, the voting of taxes, 
and the freedom of the press. Most of these German constitutions were 
modelled upon the French charter of Louis XVIII. 

^ The universities were indeed special centres of liberal enthusiasm, 
the Jena '• Burschenschaft'' having spread to all the other universities, but it 
was ludicrous that the grand rally of German students at the Wartburg 
Castle, Oct. 18, 1817, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Reforma- 
tion and the 4th of the battle of Leipzig, should be feared by Metternich 
and his minions as shaking the pillars of state. The Jena Burschenschaft 
with the permission of the Weimar government had invited all the student- 
bodies in Germany to send delegates to the celebration. About 500 young 
men assembled. The exercises were mainly religious, yet speakers natu- 
rally alluded to German hopes deferred. Writings of the advocates of 
absolutism were burned and the black, red and gold standard of the old 
empire saluted with fervor. Several Prussian univei'sities were suppressed 
in consequence of this excitement. The Russian envoy, Stourdza, who 
had at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, 181 8, presented a memorandum 
denouncing the revolutionary tendency of the universities, two Jena 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 419 

students, counts Bochholz and Keller, challenged to a duel. In 1819 a 
theological student named Sand poniarded Kotzebue for editorials in his 
paper ridiculing and condemning the students as hostile to good govern- 
ment. These events led Metternich to convoke at Carlsbad, Aug. 7, 1 819, 
the conference which issued the famous Carlsbad Decrees, instituting rigor- 
ous censorship over universities and the press and against all ' demagogical 
associations.' Professors were to be watched as closely as students, and 
to be displaced for any teachings calculated to disturb ' the public order 
and peace or the bases of existing political arrangements.' 

§ II 1830 

Droysen, Abhandlutig, zur Gesch. d. pr. Politik in i830-'2. Alison, ch. xxiv. 
Klupfel, as in bibliog. Couchon-Letnaire , Hist, de la rev. de J830. Fyffe, 
II, V, vii. 

The French revolution of 1830 swept across all 
Europe, but enormous as was the good which it effected 
in Belgium, England and indeed everywhere^ outside of 
Metternich's reach, it confirmed, not alleviated, the 
political wretchedness of Germany. Its immediate in- 
fluence was most marked along the Rhine, in the 
smaller states, which were near France,^ sympathized 
with its rage against the Bourbons and contained most 
of the German progressive party. The fall of Warsaw 
and the consequent influx of Polish patriots quickened 
liberal zeal. But this, owing to the total lack of politi- 
cal training, was abstract rather than practical, studying 
grievances more than remedies, and it was as yet too 
little devoted to the deliverance of the nation as a whole. 
Hence several wild outbreaks,^ accomplishing no good 
but greatly hindering real progress. Hannover, Bruns- 
wick, Saxony and electoral Hesse now secured constitu- 
tions, which, in spite of the diet's efforts to make them 
so, were not of the antique estates-pattern, yet the Han- 
noverian was suppressed in 1837 by the new king, Ernest 



420 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

Augustus, who punished seven of Gottingen's ablest 
professors * for protesting. German liberalism had for 
a time a stout champion in King William of Wiirttem- 
berg, who sought to unite the central and southern 
lands into a political and military alliance which could 
halt or hinder the absolutist march. But Metternich, 
backed by Prussia, adroitly put forward in this base 
work to destroy her prestige, using spies, prisons and 
corrupt courts and promoting the * loyal,' succeeded in 
stamping out liberty and progress as effectually in Ger- 
many as in Austria, Italy and Spain. ^ The final acts of 
the Vienna Congress in 1820, together with the diet's 
decrees of 1832, assuming right to annul a Landtag's^ 
laws, immensely strengthened the Bund for evil. Small 
states could now be forced to persecute each other. 
Constitutions and personal rights were nullified, all 
political powers boldly declared to reside in the Fiirsten. 
Karl-August and King William were driven to change 
course, all patriots to recant, wait in silence, or busy 
themselves in literature, which tyranny fostered as a 
narcotic. Compared with this leaden despotism Napo- 
leon or the worst Bourbons furnished an ideal rule. 

1 Belgium was now separated from Holland, with which the Vienna 
Congress had so stupidly joined it. England passed its first great Reform 
Bill in 1832. Poland now lost the constitution of 1 815 and became a 
mere Russian province, though with special administration. 

'^ The Prussian Rhine-provinces had been left to a great extent in the 
enjoyment of the French laws and administrative methods established 
while they belonged to France. The Rhein-Bund had left memories of 
order, personal rights and freedom which men could not help associating 
with France. 

3 At the * Hambach Festival,' in Rhenish Bavaria, windy orators ha- 
rangued some 30,(XX) men and women decked in black, red and gold, cry- 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 421 

ing * to arms, down with the princes,' etc. A band of misguided conspira- 
tors overpowered the Frankfort poHce and military for a few hours, April 
3, 1833. Mliller, 159 sq., Weber, 780. 

* 'The Gottingen Seven ' : Albrecht, Dahlmann, Ewald, Gervinus, Weber 
and the two Grimms. All were deprived of their posts, and Dahlmann, 
Gervinus and Jacob Grimm, who had published their protests, had to leave 
the country within three days. The diet supported Ernest Augustus in 
this. He had in England been the Tory leader. But for prevalence of 
the Salic law [Ch. VI, § 11, n. i] in Hannover, Victoria would at this time, 
1837, have become monarch of Hannover as of England. 

^ The Holy Alliance [Ch. X, § 20, n. 7] was shamefully instrumental in 
oppressing these lands. Its plausible principle of mutual cooperation on 
the part of the banded monarchs was stretched to apply to all cases where 
monarchy was threatened by revolution. Under its auspices Austria beat 
down liberalism through the entire length of Italy in 1821, and France 
aided Ferdinand VII of Spain in 1823 to overthrow the Cadiz constitution. 
Fear that it purposed to aid Spain in recovering her lost American de- 
pendencies evoked the Monroe Doctrine from President Monroe in his 
message, Dec, 1823. 

^ Landtag— the diet or legislature of one of the states composing the 
confederation. 



§ 12 The Mirage of '48 

Weber, II, 799 sqq. Miiller, 186-292. Van Deventer, jo annees de Vhist. federale 
de I'AUemagne. Barmg-Goiild, Germany Past and Present, 2 v. Kl'tlpfel, .-s in 
bibliog. Kaltenborn, Gesch. d. d. Btindesverh'dltnisse , etc., Abschn. v. 

Liberal ideas, domestic and streaming in with easier 
communication from Italy, Greece, England, France 
and especially Switzerland,^ proved at last more than a 
match for Metternich, and when the revolution of 1848 
rocked to its base every throne of Continental Europe, 
he fell. Longing for German unity and freedom now 
revived, more intense and hopeful than ever. Radicals 
urged a German republic, to match the new French one, 
but most patriots — a dream cherished ever since the 
collapse thereof — favored resuscitation of the old em- 



422 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

pire,^ with a strong and responsible executive, and a 
central, popularly elective parliament. Conservatives 
themselves demanded that the diet, representing Fiirs- 
ten alone, should be supplemented by a popular chamber. 
There were liberal risings in every state,^ liberal minis- 
tries came in, both Prussia and Austria secured genu- 
ine constitutions.^ A meeting at Heidelberg, March 5, 
chose a committee of seven to summon a preliminary 
convention and publish a plan for a regular Constituent 
Assembly, and such an Assembly convened at Frankfort 
on May 18. Thus challenged, the diet too set to work 
to amend the ground-law of the Bund itself, but the 
Constituent having elected Archduke John imperial 
administrator pending choice of an emperor, the old 
legislature resigned to him its power and dispersed. 
Abstractly considered, the new constitution was well 
enough,^ but, although traversing all the principles and 
practice of Prussia and Austria and sure to meet their 
hostility, it lacked power to coerce or to set itself in 
motion. Its impotence was soon apparent. The war 
with Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein, waged by the 
Assembly and Prussia in common, the latter terminated 
in defiance of the Assembly, which had to yield. On 
the question whether the empire should embrace Austria 
the klein-deutsche party was victor, but Austria boldly 
refused to be excluded. The king of Prussia having 
been elected emperor, the emperor of Austria and sev- 
eral other princes declared that they would not obey 
him. Frederic William of course declined the dignity, 
which then went begging. The plan for a new polity 
had failed utterly. The Assembly's best members gone, 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 



423 



the Rump adjourned to Stuttgart, to be soon dispersed 
by the military. Prussian troops quelled South German 
disorder, and on September 2, 1850, the old diet resumed 
its idle deliberations. 

1 We cannot even sketch the process of this revolution in these lands, 
but must refer to the literature named at the head of the paragraph. MUl- 
ler's chapters give the best resume. 

2 Although the proclamation of Kalisch by czar Alexander and king 
Frederic Wm., Mch. 25, 1813, had named as one of the objects of the then 
imminent v^^ar to afford the German peoples defense ' in reestablishing a 
venerable empire,' the ruling powers had since 1815 somehow viewed with 
horror all thoughts of restoring the Holy Roman Empire in any form, per- 
haps because agitators had usually cried for it. The popular feeling beau- 
tifully appears in Schenkendorf's Wollt ihr Keinen Kaiser Kuren ? 

1 Frei geworden isi der Strom, 

1st das Latid am detitschen Rheine; 
Dock der Stiihl von Felsgesteine 
Trauert noch im Aachener Dom. 

2 Stekt er ivohl noch lange leer ? 
Will sich dratif kei7t Kaiser setzett 
Allen Volkern zum Ergotzen, 

Der Bedr'dngten Schirm und Wehr f 

3 Ach, die Sehnsucht wird so laui ! 
Wollt ihr keinen Kaiser kiiren ? 
Komtnt kein Ritter heimzufuhren 
Deutschland die verlassne Braut ? 

3 Both Berlin and Vienna were for a time in the hands of the populace. 
In the liberalist stir of these days in Baden Franz Sigel, general in the 
American Civil War, first became prominent, and the name of Carl Schurz 
was heard. Hosts of the German patriots went to America so soon as 
hope of a new government proved vain. 

* For Prussia's constitution of 1847, see § 15, n. i. The new, liberal 
one was sworn to by the king on Feb. 6, 1850. 

^ There was to be a Reichstag or diet, made up of senate and popular 
assembly, the senate consisting of delegates half of whom were to be ap- 
pointed by the state governments and half by the state legislatures. It 
was a loose confederation after all, yet as close as Germany was prepared 
for. Had it prevailed, Germany would have appeared as a unity at least 
in its foreign relations and in war. 



424 prussia and the new empire 

§ 13 Sequel 

Bryce, /^iq sq. M'.'iller, as at ^ 1.2. Frank, Wiederherstellung Deutschlands. 

'The effects, however, of the great uprising of 1848 
were not lost in Germany any more than in Italy and 
Hungary. It had made things seem possible, seem even 
for a moment accomplished, which had been till then 
mere visions ; it had awakened a keen political interest 
in the people, stirred their whole life, and given them a 
sense of national unity ^ such as they had not had since 
1 8 14. By showing the governments how insecure were 
the foundations of their arbitrary power, it had made 
them less unwilling to accept change ; it had taught 
peoples how little was to be expected from the unforced 
goodwill of princes. From this time, therefore, after the 
first reaction had spent itself, one may observe a real 
though slow progress towards free constitutional life. 
In some of the smaller states, and particularly in Baden, 
it soon came to be the policy of the government to 
encourage the action of the local parliament ; and the 
Prussian assembly became in its long and spirited strug- 
gle with the crown a political school of incomparable 
value to the rest of Germany as well as to its own great 
kingdom. One thing more, the events of 1848-50 made 
clear to the nation the hopelessness of expecting any- 
thing from the Confederation.' 

1 Hence the rise of the National- Verein in 1859, nucleus of the national- 
liberal party, which ramified through all the German states, holding 
meetings from time to time and issuing pamphlets and manifestoes. It de- 
scended lineally from the klein-deuische party of the Frankfort parliament. 
From '62 it had a rival in the Reform Union, which M'as gross-deuisck 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 425 

in sentiment, pretending to wish reform for Germany, yet determined that 
Austria should not be excluded. This Union had few supporters in Prus- 
sia, many in Hannover and the south. The contest between these 
unions kept the wretchedness of the existing constitution constantly before 
the public mind, accustoming all to the assurance that reform or revolu- 
tion must come at last. 



§ 14 Prussia's Last Genuflection 

Muller, Periods III and IV. Treitschke, Zehn Jahre d. Kampfe. Klupfel, as in bibliog. 

For declining the imperial crown as proffered Frederic 
William IV had two reasons, viz., that the revolution 
was spent ^ and that Prussia had a plan of her own for 
reforming the empire. The thought thrust forward by 
Frederic the Great in his North German Fursten-Bund'^ 
had never become Prussia's conscious policy but had not 
been forgotten. The Peace of Basel, 1795,^ stipulated 
that all the German states north of a certain parallel 
should share its benefits like Prussia. In 1806 Frederic 
William III sought to found a North German league* 
to oppose Napoleon's Rhein-Bund. Far more signifi- 
cant in the same direction was the Zollverem^ of 1833, 
uniting all Germany proper under Prussia's leadership, 
with striking and tangible advantage. We have seen 
too the kleiii-deiLtsche '^'dccX.y once at least in majority in 
the Frankfort Assembly.^ In refusing the crown offered 
him by the people's representatives Frederic William 
remembered this history, and he immediately advanced 
the Prussian proposition for uniting Germany, on a more 
conservative and monarchical basis, excluding Austria 
altogether and explicitly recognizing Prussia's hegemony. 
The imperial party of the Frankfort Assembly strongly 
approved. On May 26, 1 849, was concluded the League 



426 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

of the three Kings, Hannover and Saxony with Prussia, 
to which most of the smaller states at once adhered. 
Partly launched next year in the Erfurt Parliament and 
the Berlin Congress of Fiirsten, the scheme was wrecked 
by the opposition of Austria, now again in high ascend- 
ant from its triumphs in Italy and Hungary and straining 
every nerve to snatch from Prussia the first place in 
German affairs. It was wholly successful. South Ger- 
many drew off from Prussia to the Austrian side, and 
against Prussia's protest the diet was reopened. War 
was imminent when on the rise of anarchy in Hesse ^ 
Prussia intervened for people, the diet with Austrian 
and Bavarian troops for prince. In this crucial juncture 
Prussia, as so often before, played the coward and dashed 
all patriotic hopes. Manteuffel succeeded Radowitz as 
minister, and in conferences at Olmiitz and Dresden, 
i850-'5 1, kissed Austria's feet on Prussia's behalf. The 
Bund was fully restored. Thoughts of a federal consti- 
tution and popular rights were ignored, and an absolutist 
reaction set in much as after 1830. 

1 Probably the Prussian government would at no time thus early have 
been willing to accede to so liberal a constitution as was made at Frank- 
fort, yet under the pressure of the revolutionary storm when at its height 
concessions might have been obtained far easier than at the late hour that 
saw the constitution completed. Prussia was, however, in course of politi- 
cal progress [§§ 15-17]. 

2 Formed against Austria in 1785, by Prussia, Saxony and Hannover 
[the same powers that unite now again in 1849], soon joined by Bruns- 
wick, Mainz, Hessen-Kassel, Baden, Mecklenburg, Anhalt and the Thu- 
ringian principalities [Seeley's Stein, pt. i, ch. ii, Ranke, D. deuischen 
Mdchte u. d. Fiirsfenbiind, 2 v.]. It amounted to little [Frederic dying 
next year] save as a hint for the future. We have seen that there had 
been ever since the Reformation a tendency to cleavage between no. Ger- 
many and south, one form which it took being that of the corpus evan- 
gelic or um meditated by Gustavus Adolphus. 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 42/ 

« Ch. X, § 17. 

* Such a scheme had been suggested to him by Napoleon himself. 
Prussia was to be head of the league, Saxony and Hesse next, Hanseatic 
towns to have special privileges, Hildesheim to be the federal city. See- 
ley's Stein, vol. i, 245. 

^ Or Customs-Union. The Vienna Congress had left each of the 38 
states of the Bund to erect its own customs-system. Wiirttemberg and 
Bavaria formed a customs-union in 1828, Prussia and Hessen-Darmstadt a 
month later. The great naturalist, Oken, conceived the plan of uniting 
the two unions. The Association of German Naturalists debated the pro- 
ject at the annual meeting in Berlin, 1828, and it was realized in 1833. 
* Imperceptibly the states of the Zollverein, with a population of about 27 
million, came into a certain dependence upon Prussia, which, although at 
first only affecting industrial and commercial interests, might readily be 
improved for national and political ends.' — MUller, 165. Austria repeatedly 
sought admittance but was refused. See Weber, 784. 

^ See § 12, also § 13, n., in relation to the question whether to include 
Austria in the new government. 

^ The elector had dismissed a liberal cabinet, dissolved two parliaments 
for not confirming his illegal measures, and resolved to rule alone. He 
made Hassenpflug, the most detested man in the land, his minister. Op- 
posed by the courts he placed the country under martial law. Police, 
army and civil officers refused obedience, and the elector fled to Frank- 
fort, where he of course secured the diet's aid, as it would not do to allow 
a ruler, however wicked, to be overborne by the popular will, however 
legally and peaceably brought to bear. This was characteristic of the 
reaction now in progress. Poor, patient Germany had once more to take 
up its old, heavy yoke. 



§ 15 A Spinal Column 

Busch, and Poschinger, as in bibliog. 

At last after so many humiliations, disappointments, 
sacrificed opportunities, Prussia found a man, a veritable 
Fredericus redeviviis, whom Austria could not frighten 
or bend. Trained in the united diet ^ of Prussia from 
1847 to '50, member of the Erfurt Parliament in '50 and 



428 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

of the Bund-diet from '51 to '59, minister to St. Peters- 
burg in '59, to Paris in '62, and then minister-president 
and foreign secretary at home, by the time of the events 
just narrated Bismarck was master of Prussian, German, 
and European poUtics. First an enthusiast for Austria, 
he learned at Frankfort the wiles, corruption and hatred 
for Prussia of that power, and vowed to live for naught 
else till he had destroyed its arbitership of Germany's 
destiny. Not a republican nor yet a constitutional ^ 
monarchist of full liberal stripe, Bismarck saw the ne- 
cessity of winning to the side of his government the 
popular conscience and intelligence, and he hated Met- 
ternich's methods no less heartily than did Gagern ^ 
himself. Zealot for German unity, he had no faith in 
seeking this by the Frankfort plan, which could succeed 
only in proportion as it denationalized constituent states, 
or any otherwise than by the ' blood and iron ' * of some 
single power, with which the rest had in the main com- 
mon interests. He viewed Prussia as such a power, 
with him Prussian and German patriotism being identi- 
cal. He was fortunate in the new king, William,^ politi- 
cally timid like most Hohenzollern, but a brave soldier, 
with a keen mind for military organization, and trustful 
of his minister. Opposed in the lower house of the Prus- 
sian diet and never liberal enough for the progressists, 
the resolute premier managed to carry with him the 
living forces of Prussia, and more and more to gain the 
confidence of Germany. That Prussia would no longer 
follow Austria he announced loudly, and the fact that 
by intriguing with the little states Austria fully con- 
trolled the diet,^ gave him plausible ground for soon 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 429 

repudiating the Bund itself and renewing Frederic Wil- 
liam IV's motion of 1849.'' Meantime events enabled 
him to use other than diplomatic methods in realizing 
such an idea. 

1 Still a diet of estates, with no properly popular representation, and 
differing from the preceding legislative apparatus of Prussia almost solely 
in consisting of a single assembly, acting for all the provinces under the 
Prussian crown. There were two curia : the house of lords, made up of 
princes of the blood, foreign princes holding fiefs from Prussia, ' media- 
tized nobles,' i.e., such as had had lands and lost them by the acts of 
Napoleon or of the Congress of Vienna, and the representatives of certain 
foundations and corporations; and the house of the three estates, wherein 
sat representatives of the Riiterschaft or lesser nobility and gentry, of the 
cities, and of the country parishes. This mock legislature had no initia- 
tive, and on general legislation could merely advise, but it could veto any 
law to increase taxes. Patriots frowned upon so mean a creation, yet 
hoped that it might, as it did, lead to something better. On Feb. 6, 1850, 
Fred. Wm. IV swore to a new constitution which his Landtag had pre- 
pared, truly liberal in nature. 

2 A chief reason for the long delay of tolerable government in Ger- 
many M'as the conflict of the sentiment for unity with that for constitution- 
alism. The Prussian policy was strongly anti-republican, repeUing liberals 
like Rotteck, Welcker and Gagern, whose main home was in the Centre 
and South, even when they were convinced that Prussian victory meant a 
united Fatherland. Union finally came by compromise, Prussia becoming 
more liberal, the ultra-liberals insisting less on ideally free institutions at 
once. King William and Bismarck were so late as '63 both apparently 
reactionary, utter foes of constitutionalism, so that liberals were ' disposed 
fairly to abjure Prussia as given over to a reprobate mind.' 

3 President of the Frankfort Constituent Assembly. He was among 
the ablest German constitutional monarchists of the time. 

* 'It is not by speeches and resolutions of majorities that the great 
questions of the time are to be decided — that was the mistake of i84S-'9 
— bid by blood and iron.'' — Bismarck. 

^ William I, king of Prussia since Jan. 2, 1 86 1, emperor since '71. He 
commanded the troops which had to subdue in Baden and Rhenish Bavaria 
the last disorders of the revolution of i848-'9 [§ 12]. 

* There was no fairness in the composition of the Bund-diet. Austria, 



430 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hannover, WUrtlemberg and Baden together 
had in the Council or abridged diet only 7 votes to the 10 controlled by 
the smaller states. In the plenum those great states had but 27, the rest 
39. By underhanded higgling, wherein her ministers were adepts, Austria 
could always secure a majority against Prussia, if wishing to do so. When 
the Bund began operations again after the '48-'9 revolution it had no 
more loyal member than Prussia. Schwarzenberg's avowed policy, avilir 
la Prusse et aprh la demolir, had not then been openly avowed, so that 
Manteuffel could announce Prussia's as still Verbriiderung und Biindniss 
mil Oester7-eich. Rochow on entering the reopened diet made a set speech, 
inspired from Berlin, in which he energetically supported the revival of 
the Bund as a hopeful advance in German public law. Even Bismarck 
went thither in this mind, fully trusting in Austria. In less than a year 
he was undeceived, seeing Austria's surreptitious influence daily used 
against Prussia. Poschinger, pt. i, Einleitung, and Urkunde 38. Austria 
had no dream that Prussia would go the bold way in which Bismarck soon 
led. Busch, vol. i, ch. v. 
^ See § 13. 

§ 16 Crash of the Old Bund 

Bryce, 423 sqq. Muller, Fourth Period. Busch, as in bibliog. Malet, Overthrow of 
the Germanic Confederation in 1866. Treitschke, ZeJui Jahre d. K'dntpfe. Hazier, 
Seven Weeks' War, 2 v. Cherbuliez, Allentagfie politique, jSdd-'jO. 

In 1863, defying an overwhelming public sentiment 
in Germany, King Christian IX of Denmark proceeded 
to incorporate Schleswig^ with his realm, and to treat 
Holstein, a member of the Bund, as Denmark's vassal. 
Troops of the Bund first, then those of Austria and 
Prussia invaded the duchies to redress the injustice, 
and the ensuing war of 1864 left these the joint prop- 
erty ^ of the two great German powers. Austria and 
the Bund, determined not to enlarge Prussia, were for 
constituting the acquired territory a sovereign member 
of the Bund, under Duke Frederic of Augustenburg. 
To this plan Prussia would consent only on the impossi- 
ble condition of herself controlling the new state's military 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 43 1 

and naval forces and postal system. As the imbroglio 
waxed grave Bismarck boldly concluded to make the 
Schleswig-Holstein affair part of the great German 
question of the age and to settle both at once. Care- 
ful diplomacy assured him of France's neutrality and 
of Sardinia's cooperation. Prussia's invasion of Hol- 
stein, which by agreement ^ Austria was to administer, 
the diet, pushed by Austria, declares a breach of the 
peace and mobilizes its army, wJiereiipon Prussia retires 
forever from the old Bund, June 14, 1866. Next day 
she bids Hannover, Saxony and Electoral Hesse place 
their troops again upon a peace footing and join a 
new confederacy under Prussian headship. Their re- 
fusal proved her nearest neighbors as unaware* as the 
rest of the world how terrible a new will-power had 
taken possession of Prussia. One battle brought these 
three states to Prussia's feet, a few more skirmishes 
carried her arms across the Main, to Wiirzburg and 
Niirnberg. Austria fared as ill as her petty allies, be- 
ing so crippled in the great battle of Koniggratz,^ July 
3, as at once to begin negotiations for peace. In the 
Treaty of Prag, August 23, Austria recognizes the 
dissolution of the old Bund, consents to be excluded 
from a new if made, and cedes its rights in the Elbe 
duchies to Prussia, which now appropriates also Han- 
nover, Electoral Hesse, Nassau and Frankfort, thus 
removing the wall between its two halves. Sardinia 
obtains Venetia, Hungary its old constitution.^ 

1 The Schleswig-Holstein difficulty was old already. These lands ob- 
served the Salic law [Ch. VI, § ii, n. i] though for centuries governed in 
a personal union with Denmark, which did not. in 1846 king Christian 
VIII of Denmark, last male of his line except a son and a brother both 



432 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

childless, proclaimed that the union was to be permanent, Salic law to the 
contrary notwithstanding. This was an afifront not to the duchies alone 
but to all Germany, Holstein being a member of the Bund, as formerly 
always of the empire. Hence when in 1848 king Frederic VII declared 
Schleswig incorporated with Denmark, Prussia and the Frankfort Con- 
stituent Assembly [instead of the then suspended diet] forcibly interposed 
and freed the duchies; but under Metternich's influence their protest soon 
came to be viewed as revolutionary, and Denmark, promising to respect 
their rights, i.e., not to incorporate, was confirmed in their possession by 
Prussia and Austria, and even by a protocol of all the great powers 
united, at London, May, 1852. But in 1863 king Christian IX accepted 
a new constitution which incorporated Schleswig with Denmark, as had 
been attempted in 1848. Prussia and Austria now interposed to carry out 
the London protocol, but the armed opposition of Denmark gave them an 
excuse for renouncing the protocol, so as to proceed independently, still 
easier in that neither the Bund nor the duchies had ever acknowledged 
that instrument. Denmark was very bold, vainly expecting the interposi- 
tion of Great Britain and France. Dicey, Schleswig-IIolstein War. 

2 By right of conquest as well as succeeding according to the peace 
of Vienna, Oct. 30, 1864, to all the rights which the king of Denmark had 
over the duchies, whether by the London protocol or otherwise. The dif- 
ficulty was peculiarly aggravated by the claim of duke Frederic of Augus- 
tenburg to be now ruler of the duchies by hereditary right under the Salic 
law. Prussia as well as Austria recognized this claim on first interposing, 
but subsequently when planning incorporation, slighted it on the ground 
that it had been renounced by Frederic's father. Prussia's final arrange- 
ment with the duke involved the marriage of his daughter with the young 
crown-prince William, so that the heirs of Augustenburg will be kings of 
Prussia and emperors of Germany. 

^ The agreement of Gastein, Aug. 14, 1865. On Prussia's artful and 
none too honorable diplomacy at this time, Bryce, 424 sqq. The two 
powers were to remain jointly sovereign in both Schleswig and Holstein, 
but Prussia was to administer S., Austria H. When, June 2, the Austrian 
g ivernor, v. Gablenz, convoked the Holstein estates against Prussia's wish, 
the latter declared it a breach of the Gastein convention, and ordered 
Manteuffel, governor of Schleswig, to occupy Holstein with troops. This 
meant war. Von Gablenz gave way under protest, and marched home- 
ward. 

* Perhaps the world was never before so surprised as by the deeds of 
Prussia in this war. The south German states held to Austria of course. 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 433 

Austria felt so sure of victory as to decline the proffered mediation of 
France, England and Russia, except on the condition that no territorial 
changes should be discussed. Louis Napoleon hailed the war with pleas- 
ure, assured of Prussia's defeat. Hence he readily consented to the 
Italian-Prussian alliance. When, however, he saw the Prussian armies 
sweeping toward Vienna as if upon parade, he regretted the blows he had 
given Austria in 1859 [Magenta, Solferino] and sought to coax Victor 
Emanuel to put up with Austria's offer of Venetia and make peace apart 
from Prussia. The king of Italy remained true to Prussia. Cf. § 19, n. i. 

^ Or Sadowa. 

^ Taken from it when the revolution of i848-'9 was put down. The 
war of 1866 proved a great blessing to the Austrian lands, enforcing all 
manner of reforms in a liberal direction. 



§ 17 Birth of a New 

Busch, vol. i, ch. v. Laveleye, Prusse ei V Autriche depuis Sadowa. Veron, AUe- 
inagtie depuis Sadowa. 

That union of Germany proper which Frederic the 
Great sought in vain to effect in 1785, Frederic WilUam 
III in 1806, and Frederic William IV in 1850, the triumph 
of William I in 1866 permitted him to achieve.^ Hap- 
pily, as Prussia's power enabled her to enforce ^ union, 
her own enlarging liberalism, coupled with her hostility 
to Austria, its system and its gross-deutsch friends, forced 
her to make that union liberal, as demanded by the 
growing klein-deiitscJie party. The result was almost 
exactly what the moderates of '48 had sought, the new 
constitution embodying all the feasible good of theirs, 
with greater centralization and strength. Presidency 
in the Bund was made forever a property of the Prus- 
sian monarch, who was also to represent it internation- 
ally. The Prussian military system, including obligation 
of all males to military service, was made general, and 
the entire war and naval force of the Bund consolidated 



434 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

and placed under the President's command. The vari- 
ous postal and telegraph systems were likewise to be 
unified, and the Bund as such to be alone represented 
in the Zollverein. The legislature was bicameral, a 
Bimdesrath or senate representing the rulers, and a 
diet in numbers according to population, elected by 
direct, universal suffrage, to be convoked at least annu- 
ally. The Rath voted scrutin de liste^ the diet viritim. 
Consent of the former was necessary to a declaration of 
war, of both to the validity of an imperial law. The 
chancellor or imperial minister was made responsible. 

1 On August 1 8, 1 866, Prussia concluded with Saxe- Weimar, Olden- 
burg, Brunswick, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Anhalt, Schwarz- 
burg-Sondershausen, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt,Waldeck, Reuss younger line, 
Schaumburg-Lippe, Llibeck, Bremen and Hamburg, a treaty of alliance, to 
which Mecklenburg-Schwerin and -Strelitz acceded on the 2ist, and a little 
later, Saxony, Saxe-Meiningen, Reuss older line, and Hesse for its parts 
north of the Main, providing for the calling of a convention-parliament to 
prepare a constitution. The convention, elected substantially in the same 
way as the Frankfort Constituent of '49, assembled at Berlin, February 24, 
1867. The allied governments submitted a draft, which the convention 
altered at forty-one points. The governments accepted the changes, and 
on April 17, 1867, the new constitution was declared adopted. It went 
into effect the next July i. The Bund embraced the 21 states north of the 
Main, or 22 counting the grand-duchy of Hesse, which held thereto an 
ambiguous relation, partly within and partly without, exactly as had many 
a land to the old empire and to the old Bund. 

2 So early as 1 861 v. Sybel, in pref. to Die deiitsche Nation u. d. Kai- 
serreich, had declared : * As certainly as rivers run to the sea, there will be 
formed in Germany, by the side of Austria, a limited federation under the 
direction of Prussia. To secure it recourse will be had to all the means of 
persuasion and diplomacy, but to war in case of resistance.' 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 435 



§ 18 From Bund to Empire 

Muller,% 26. Friedl'dndery'wv Detitsche Rundschau, yo\.'\\\. ^ryr? , 430 sqq. Veron, 
as at § 17. Martin, Ver/assung u. Grundgesetze d. deutschen Reichs. 

To the surprise of many, yet wisely, Bavaria, Wiirttem- 
berg, Baden and Hesse ^ were not forced into the new 
confederation. Their membership at first could have 
been only involuntary, and would have rendered strong 
centralization impossible. Article 79 of the constitu- 
tion opened to them a door, but entrance depended upon 
their own option. In each a strong national-liberal party 
wished union with the North, but was opposed by the 
ultra-liberals and the clericals, the last especially in 
Bavaria, a catholic land, dreading Prussia religiously,^ 
while the democrats throughout the Soutti declaimed 
against Prussia's military government and greed of terri- 
tory, and made the most of every sign that her liberal 
professions were hypocritical. Strict particularists were 
few, most opponents of union advocating a South Ger- 
man Bund, some with, some without a French protector- 
ate, the gross-deiitsche or Austrian party seeing as yet 
no hope on account of the Peace of Prag.^ The treaties * 
of offence and defence with the Bund, by which in case 
of war the troops of each southern state were to be 
placed under command of the king of Prussia, Bavaria 
and Wiirttemberg assented to only under pressure. The 
new Zollverein,^ and the reorganization of the southern 
armies on the Prussian model had both to be carried 
through against like pronounced hostility. Napoleon's 
excuseless declaration of war in 1870 was thus a God- 
send for German unity, revealing that monarch's selfish- 



436 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

ness both directly and by occasioning the publication 
of his designs of German conquest in 1866. South 
Germany entered the war no less heartily than the 
Bund,^ and their common sufferings and glory therein 
made a more perfect union presently a matter of course. 
Baden and Hesse, the most inclined fhereto all along, 
joined the Bund November 15, 1870, Bavaria the 23d, 
Wiirttemberg the 25th. The name 'Bund' was changed 
to 'Reich' and 'President' to 'Kaiser,' December 10, 
and proclamation made accordingly January 18, 1871. 
The constitution of the Bund, revised in terminology to 
suit these changes, became the constitution '' of the new 
German Empire. 

1 I.e., the portion of Germany proper south of the Main. 

2 England and America httle knew to what an extent the wars of 1866 
and 1870 involved religious interests. Rome and the Jesuits thought of 
Sadowa as a triumph of heretics. 'The world is coming to an end, ex- 
claimed cardinal Antonelli on hearing the news. Catholic opposition in 
south Germany did more than anything else to retard German union. 

3 Which excluded Austria from all participation in the reconstruction 
of Germany [§ 16]. 

^ These were kept secret for the time, and Louis Napoleon rested in 
the pleasant expectation of another Rhein-Bund so soon as he might please 
to go to war with Prussia. 

^ The legislature of this was to consist of the north German Bundes- 
rath, enlarged pro hoc by delegates from the southern states. This was a 
fine schema for the Reichstag soon to be, accustoming public men from the 
south to visit Berlin and do state business with northerners. The revived 
ZoUverein did little work however, as the feudalists and Fortschritiler who 
legislated for it on the Bund's behalf nearly always sided with the southern 
obstructionists against the national-liberals. 

^ 'Seldom had such a national rising been seen — so swift, so universal, 
so enthusiastic, sweeping away in a moment the heart-burnings of liberals 
and feudals in Prussia, the jealousies of north and south Germans, of prot- 
estants and catholics. Every citizen, every soldier, felt that this struggle 
was a struggle for the greatness and freedom of the nation; and the un- 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 43/ 

broken career of victory which carried the German arms over the east and 
centre of France, and placed them at last triumphant in the capital of their 
foes, proved, in the truest sense, what strength there is in a righteous 
cause.' — Bryce. 

' It thus appears that 1871 was really one of the least significant years 
in this long evolution. The war of 1866 and Napoleon's declaration of 
war in '70 were the crucial turning-points. 



§ 19 De Bello Gallico 

Gramont, France et Priisse avant la guerre. Junck, Deutsck.-franz. Krieg, iSyo-'i. 
Treitschke, Zehti Jahre d. K'dmp/e. Veron, as at § 17. Riistow, The W. for the 
Rhine Frontier, 3 v. Benedetti, Ma Mission ett Prusse. 

Napoleon's audacity at home and showy deeds in the 
Crimean and ItaHan wars made him at once the hero, 
arbiter and dread of Europe. He burned to equal his 
uncle, avenge Waterloo and extend France permanently 
to the Rhine. Blind to the rise of Prussia in military 
organization and resources, he did not hesitate in '59 to 
weaken ^ Austria, her natural foe, or to aid in erecting 
the kingdom of Italy, her natural ally. He gladly con- 
sented to Prussia's plans in '66, expecting a war which 
would cripple both contestants and open way for the 
triumph of his ambitions. Piqued at failure to secure 
Bismarck's promise of reward for his abstention, he be- 
gan courting Austria and planning Prussia's defeat, and 
the latter's overwhelming victory, revealing that France 
had a dangerous rival in arms, he a master at diplomacy, 
filled him with rage and alarm. Fight at once^ he dared 
not, so unprepared had the Mexican campaign left France, 
but he was convinced that naught but a victorious war 
would restore his waning prestige. Jesuits, all Roman 
catholics,^ ambitious military men prodded him to arms, 
as did his decreasing popularity in France, and the ecu- 



438 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

menical disgrace of his procedure in Mexico. In keep- 
ing with these selfish motives for the war of 1870, was 
the manner of provoking it, purely wanton,* alienating 
the world's sympathy, and exhibiting Prussia as an in- 
jured party redressing its wrong. The result, so far as 
related to the emperor,^ all felt to be poetic justice. 
First blood drawn August 2, the i8th sees Bazaine 
locked in Metz with 175,000 men, September 2, Napo- 
leon himself a prisoner with 110,000 more. The Second 
Republic is proclaimed September 4, and Paris surren- 
ders January 28, 1871, more than half France meantime 
scoured by German armies. Instead of carrying France 
to the Rhine the war made Elsass and Lothringen Ger- 
man again,^ and compelled the offending nation to pay 
within three years a war indemnity of five milliards of 
francs. 

1 Never did the head of a state commit more blunders in the same 
length of time. Certainly none in modern times has displayed more 
perfidy. From his point of view he should have averted rather than 
helped Austria's misfortune in '59, allied himself with that power in '66, 
and avoided meddling in Mexican affairs altogether. He was Bismarck's 
dupe from beginning to end. It seems indeed to have been his fussy ob- 
trusion which led in '66 to the fixing of the Main as southern boundary to 
the Bund, but this proved a blessing to Prussia and Germany, not to 
France, his hope still to keep Germany divided and subject to French 
arbitrament failing utterly. In '51 as well as in '59 Napoleon had invited 
Prussia to a French aUiance, with gracious permission, on compliance, to 
annex and reorganize in Germany as she might list. Cf. § 16, n. 4. 

2 Immediately after Sadowa, in Aug., '66, Napoleon demanded Prus- 
sia's consent to his acquisition of Rhenish Bavaria and Hesse, including the 
fortress of Mainz, and the renunciation by Prussia of right to garrison the 
fortress of Luxemburg, threatening war in case of refusal. Benedetti having 
presented these demands, Bismarck exclaimed: 'Good: then it is war.' 
The emperor had to recede, trumping up the excuse that the threat of war 
had been wrung from him when ill. MUUer, 357. 



PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 439 

^ Foremost of all, the empress Eugenie, a bigoted devotee, wholly sub- 
servient to the Jesuits. 'This is my war,' she said, the fatal evening when 
the declaration was resolved upon, 'with God's help we will subdue the 
protestant Prussians.' 

* Queen Isabella having abdicated, June 25, 1870, the Spanish ministry 
proposed prince Leopold of HohenzoUern for king of Spain. Although 
Leopold was a distant relative of king William, the latter had had noth- 
ing to do with the choice. Yet Napoleon demanded that he should forbid 
Leopold's acceptance. William refused. As, however, his relative de- 
clined the throne without the demanded intervention from Berlin, the 
whole world supposed the question settled, when, to the amazement of all, 
Napoleon required William to agree that no HohenzoUern should ever 
with his consent acquire the Spanish crown. Refusal was a foregone con- 
clusion, and when war was declared no efforts that Napoleon could make 
could conceal the utter frivolousness and shabbiness of the pretext. 

^ After the fall of the empire, as its opponents had not wished the war, 
they appealed to the Prussians for its cessation. Bismarck's reply was 
that it had been declared with the approval of a unanimous French senate 
and by a vote of 245 against 10 in the chamber, that hence nation and not 
emperor alone must bear the consequences. This was good international 
law but in fact unjust. Majority votes under the empire were often very 
far from expressing the real national will. 

^ V. Sybel, DeiUschland^s Rechte auf Elsass-Lothringen, in Kl. hist. 
Schrifteii, vol. iii. On the earlier relation of these territories to Germany, 
Weber, II, 78 sqq., antCy Chaps. IX, § 19, n. 7, X, § 3, n. I. 



§ 20 New Germany and New Europe 

Karl Blind, ' Radical and Revolutionary Parties in Europe,' Contemp. Rev., Oct., 1882. 
Milller, Gesch. d. Politik, i87i-'8i. Pey, Allemagne d'aujourd'Juii. Tuttle, 
German Political Leaders. HiUebrand, La Prusse Conteniporaine. Baring-Gould, 
as at § 12. 

The rise of Prussia will prove to have been one of the 
most momentous changes in the entire history of civili- 
zation. It placed the headship of Continental Europe 
for the first time in protestant and purely Teutonic 
hands, reducing Austria, Rome's stoutest ally, to the 
second rank of governments. The change brought 



440 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW EMPIRE 

about in France rendered that state unwilling as well 
as unable longer to champion the church, while greatly 
strengthening it as a liberal force by displaying the 
weakness of imperialism and at once bracing and sober- 
ing republican purposes^ Advanced church laws were 
passed in Switzerland, free thought took courage even 
in Austria. Italian unity was completed, Victor Eman- 
uel defying papal anathemas and fearlessly moving on 
Rome so soon as its French guards were needed at home. 
More remarkable are and are to be the results in Ger- 
many itself, where already begin to appear those subtle 
but choice developments of civilization which only grand 
statehood can caU forth. With all the helpful possibilities 
of the old empire the new joins the eminent advantages 
of being (i) purely German, (2) powerfully centralized, 
and (3) solely political, free from all ecclesiastical alliance. 
Thrilled with great life Germany proceeds to outgrow 
the Fatherland, fretting Ocean with her merchantmen, 
planting colonies beyond. Germany with her unmatched 
prestige, Germany so learned and strong, so peaceable if 
permitted to be, so terrible if provoked, Germany pos- 
sessing resources so vast and varied, developed and 
undeveloped, wheels into column with Great Britain 
and the United States to forward the irresistible march 
of Teutonic civilization round the globe. 



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